Writer: Miss Mopp
Director: Chris Clegg
Racers, start your engines and may the best panto dame, win. Miss Mopp’s new adaptation of Sleeping Beauty playing at the Harold Pinter Theare is built around four major names from the UK series of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the show references keep on coming so make sure you are up to speed with the key queens from all four seasons. The bits in between, directed by Christopher Clegg, form a deliberately thrown together version of the fairy tale, serviceable rather than substantial, with some classic characteristics that rely on its panto queens to keep the momentum up.
The sketched story is more or less the familiar one, Princess Beauty is cursed in her cradle by her evil fairy aunt for an ancient slight within the family and reaches her 16th birthday destined to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a long sleep. Around this Miss Mopp weaves some additional narrative for the King and Queen, an American Prince who was also a childhood friend and a foundling step-sibling who completes the court with comedy side plots and running jokes to enhance the show.
While the story of Sleeping Beauty may be rather scattered and at times even irrelevant, the piece is anchored by big solo segments for its four Drag Race stars – Victoria Scone playing Carabosse, Kate Butch as Queen Camilla, Michael Marouli as Fairy Fabulous and Kitty Scott Claus as Princess Beauty – who each get at least two sections in Act One to command the room which they easily do. Between them there are stand-up routines with some gasp-inducing Camilla and Diana jokes that mock-shock the room, audience participation in various formats so as ever with panto anyone sitting in the accessible and visible front rows provides the targets, as well as song and dance routines, visual gags and plenty of shade being thrown in all directions.
The plot, thin and loosely followed as it is here, is a mere convenience, sometimes inspiring great moments including a pastiche of the Twelve Days of Christmas with only four performers increasingly fed up as they run up and down the stage, and sometimes the story becomes a distraction from the more interesting jokes, adlibbing and improvisation happening in spite of it. This Sleeping Beauty is meant to be shabby and Miss Mopp has suggested some nice tweaks in the second half that offer a more contemporary and realistic finale, as well as a nice manoeuvre around the icky question of an unconscious woman’s consent, but as chaos unfolds on stage, the pantomime increasingly relies on its inventive cast to stick it all back together.
Giving Kate Butch, Michael Marouli, Kitty Scott Claus and Victoria Scone comedy freedom to do what they do best is Sleeping Beauty’s saving grace but also its downfall, making the story itself a fractured distraction between their comedy skits. But at least during the 2.5 hour running time, the rest of the cast also take the opportunity to go with the shambling flow including a perplexed Kemah Bob ad Prinyx Handsome, LoUis CYfer as King Clyde and Ophelia Love as a random villager who makes a bid for stardom in Act Two.
Not all the jokes land, it could have been naughtier and maybe the plot points could work a bit harder, but this version of Sleeping Beauty is a showcase for its fabulous cast, and by the end no one minds a bit.
Runs Until 31 December.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Shady queens
