It hasn't got Sir Ian McKellen starring in it, or Stephen Fry writing it, but Cinderella is as posh as panto is going to get this belt-tightening Christmas. On a set so sparkly you don’t know whether to reach for sunglasses or worry about epilepsy, Gareth Gates, Alistair McGowan, American ventriloquist Ronn Lucas and Joanna "Gavin and Stacey" Page jockey for position, while perfunctorily ticking off the time-honoured plot points.
Without a new wife to hector him —she’s dead, perhaps because the wage bill couldn’t stretch any further — it’s hard to understand why the Baron (McGowan) lets his step-daughters the Ugly Sisters run riot over Hardup Hall.
Yet there’s no time to dwell on narrative logic as everyone has a turn to do. My goodness, do they turn, and turn again, more than in an entire run of Dick Whittington. There’s no need for Gates’s Prince Charming to launch into that jolly ode to death Spirit In The Sky once he’s proposed to Cinders (Page), but he does. So, by the all-glitter finale, do we, benignly beaten into submission by the nearly all-out charm offensive.
But here’s the rub. Despite being the title character, Page struggles to get a word in edgeways between all the blokes from the telly showing off in Peter Denyer’s excessively lengthy production. Gates is forever belting out big numbers, McGowan impersonates everyone we’ve ever heard of and the impressive Lucas suggests he’s a one-man show who has, for some unfathomable reason, become tenuously connected to a team effort. The best the appealing Page manages is the occasional "lush!" There’s something disquieting in the gender stakes when the girls having most fun are actually boys — Graham Hoadly and Andrew Ryan as the riotous Ugly Sisters.
Perhaps this lady doth protest too much. McGowan spices up Susie McKenna’s unsurprising script with some cherishable touches, not least when he arrives singing I Am An Englishman, only to learn that Page is "doing it Welsh". Off he trots, to return with the flag of the Principality and a marvellously altered accent that endures for the rest of the evening. You’ll go to the ball – and you might just have one too.
Cinderella
New Wimbledon Theatre
The Broadway, Wimbledon, SW19 1QG
