Cinderella : Pantomime Theatre Royal Nottingham

 On Tuesday, I had a lovely evening out with the rest of the Ana Mum Diary team, and my Mum.  We went to see the panto, Cinderella at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham.  I had won 5 tickets to see the show, in a Skype giveaway on the this This Mummy Loves blog.

Its been many, many years since I’ve been to a pantomime, and I’m not sure what I was expecting.  It took me a little time to adjust to it, if I’m honest.  Yes, it has a loose story of Cinderella, but it’s very uniquely dissected with other scenes. Ones that play to the actors and comedians chosen, strengths usually.  It is very tongue in cheek, lots of slapstick and audience participation.  Its full of traditions, and set pieces, and pantomimes themselves are a very old English tradition dating back over 300 years.

John Partridge plays a very camp Prince Charming, I was not expecting him to be the star of the show instead of Cinderella herself.  He had a good voice, and seemed to really enjoy playing the part. Sheila Ferguson of Three Degrees fame, played the Fairy Godmother, she had an amazingly powerful voice, and I very much enjoyed her performance.  The Ugly sister, were extremely funny, so much so, that at first I think the audience completely forgot to boo whenever they came on stage, and were cheering instead.  Their outfits were completely over the top, and they got changed to a different even more outlandish dress every scene they were in.

The real stars of the show though were the Grumbleweeds, once I’d gotten over the shock of how much they had aged (well haven’t we all) I couldn’t help but chuckle away at the barrage of jokes they told.  I glanced over at Tall Dad several times, and he was crying with laughter.  As he left he also bought a signed Grumbleweed DVD!

Miss N (3) and Miss N (10) loved the show, they thought the Buttons character, played by Adam Booth was their favourite, wishing Cinderella married him instead of Prince Charming.  I seem to remember feeling like that when I saw the play when I was young too.

Overall I would give Cinderella a huge thumbs up, it made great entertainment so much so that we now want to make it part of our family tradition to go to a pantomime each year.

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