Writer: Nick Cassenbaum
Director: Abigail Anderson
Finchley’s Jewish community centre JW3 only started creating its own pantos in 2023, but they have quickly become a reliable fixture in London’s pantomime calendar. For the third in the now-annual series, writer Nick Cassenbaum turns to Cinderella, delivering a show that offers plenty of twists on the usual story.
In Cassnbaum’s adaptation, Cinderella (Talia Pick) spends all day, every day working in Breadzinki’s, the family bakery bequeathed to her and her two sisters, Fleishig and Milchig, neither of whom is interested in lifting a finger. As she toils away, her only friends are some speaking pastries and her neighbour, Talya Soames’s Buttons.
Meanwhile, Ronan Quinioiu’s Prince Charming (originally Charminski, with roots in Poland) is throwing a ball to find a wife. But he has an ulterior motive: he has squandered all the family money and needs a bride with an expansive fortune. So when Cinderella finally shows up in an exquisite ball gown and crystal slippers, he assumes that she’ll be able to bail him out – but as the clock ticks towards Shabbos and Cinders’ magic runs out, so do his chances of financial rescue.
It is a brave move to make the Prince’s discovery of who owns the discarded shoe not the conclusion of the piece, but the pivotal moment at the start of Act II that propels the panto into new directions. Before we get to that point, though, we hit all the expected plot points, from Buttons’s unrequited love and the sisters’ cruelty to the fairy godmother who makes Cinderella’s dreams come true. In the latter role, Debbie Chazen – JW3’s secret weapon – imbues Fairy Cake with such charisma that one almost forgets, and certainly forgives, that her appearance this year is only on prerecorded video.
Libby Liburd and Rosie Yadid provide excellent support as Fleishig and Milchig, providing the requisite levels of grotesquerie without ever making their characters irredeemable. They help to contribute to a script that, as ever, is dripping with Yiddish punnery.
Quiniou, who initially comes across as a wimpish, effete Prince (“I can’t throw balls… to my father’s disappointment”), gets to flex more acting muscles in Act II as, when Cinderella is banished to the seaside land of Traif, she encounters the prince’s identical twin brother, similarly expelled. The resultant campaign to return and overthrow the despotic prince keeps the laughs coming.
Musically, the JW3 tradition of using songs from Jewish performers or writers continues to deliver – and it’s no surprise that musicals feature heavily, with Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked leading the way, but with songs from Oliver!, Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and Chicago rubbing shoulders with numbers from Sabrina Carpenter and Aerosmith.
It all adds up to a distinctively Jewish pantomime that speaks to everyone. And as the two brothers’ kingdoms are unified by the end, it also speaks to a world where people of all faiths and none can find harmony – a sentiment in which we can all find hope.
Runs until 4 January 2026
