Sleeping Beauty – Broadway Theatre Catford, London

Writer and Director: Susie McKenna

One of the problems with Sleeping Beauty as a pantomime story is that its titular star has to be incapacitated long enough for the title to make sense. Or you could do what writer/director Susie McKenna does and have all that inconvenient magical nap time occur during the interval.

Still, Roshani Abbey’s Tahlia the Beautiful must wait for her entrance while her character, still a baby, receives good wishes from her fairy godmothers and a curse from Lisa Davina Phillip’s gloriously scene-chewing Carabosse. Abbey does at least get a brief cameo in the show’s opening song, a riff on Hamilton’s opening number, as Natasha Lewis’s good fairy Willowsnap lays out the story in double-quick time.

That at least gives the space to introduce us to Justin Brett’s Dame Nanny Nora, who comes blasting onto the stage on a mobility scooter and a “Save our NHS” themed outfit and rarely stops for breath from that point on. Brett’s Dame is pitched perfectly throughout, helped substantially by his ability to find audience members who will join in the mayhem with gusto.

The humour comes thick and fast. McKenna throws in some topical (and some not-so-topical) political references as she lays out the cultural conflict between the warm and welcoming Lewishtonia and the neighbouring province, the wealthy but heartless Westminsteria. Gags about river pollution and the demise of high street shopping land rather better than the references to the likes of Truss and Farage, but there are still loads of jokes for the grown-ups to pick up on while the kids enjoy the physical comedy and other panto essentials.

But it’s when the action skips forward 18 years so that Abbey can assume the mantle of Tahlia that the panto kicks into high gear. The actor lends an air of warmth and determination in the role that makes her a very modern princess without losing the charm necessary in a panto. From standing up to Durone Stokes’s Prince Gabriel (to whom she has been betrothed since birth) to strapping on Amazonian war armour to rescue him from Carabosse’s clutches following a post-curse kidnap, Tahlia is perhaps one of the most active Sleeping Beauties one might expect to see.

Musical director Ben Goddard-Young’s five-piece band provide expert accompaniment to the show’s many songs, some of which are more incongruous than others (the country twangs of Beyoncé’s Texas Hold’Em being the most extreme example). But that’s the charm of McKenna’s take on panto. The story may have been tweaked slightly to depict a fairytale world that has similarities to our own, but the silliness and the escapism are there in bucketloads.

And while there’s a sense of place in the way this pantomime refers to its surroundings (be it in place names or the characters’ accents), there is the sense, too, that the whole show is a true community endeavour. As the Broadway Theatre reasserts itself in the heart of Catford following its £7m restoration last year, Sleeping Beauty embodies the theatre’s attitude: bold, warm, welcoming, and full of surprises.

Continues until 31 December 2024