BACK in 2018, Salisbury Playhouse came up with a national award-winning version of Beauty and the Beast, which remains in my memory as the finest new pantomime version of a favourite story ever – and I really have been to a few hundred pantos in my time – oh yes I have!

Now, after all the disruption of Covid, the Salisbury team has the potential to do it again with this season’s take on Sleeping Beauty. Writers Plested, Brown and Wilsher have thrown every ingredient in the larder into this one, and I will be very surprised if one of their innovations doesn’t make it into panto history. I must avoid spoilers …..

Designer Katie Lias has done a magnificent job transforming the stage and auditorium for the re-telling of the story of the warring fairy siblings, the king and his baby daughter, curses, sleep, over-abundant weed growth and of course that kiss. The sheer, long-lasting delight of parents and children caught in a blizzard of bubbles was a joy to behold.

This really is a new look at the tale, involving the adorable Mike the Magnificent (Joseph Peacock), good fairy Frappacino (the full-of-beans Claudia Kariuki), her nobody-loved-me sister Fairy Badflix (the TV-obsessed Natasha O’Brien), the determined Stella (Lottie Mae O’Kill) and her dad Arthur Rightus (the charming Neal Craig) and of course the dame, here as Nanny Fanny Adams in the shape of Scotty Armstrong and the clothes of every nanny you can think of.

All of them are excellent singers, actors, dancers and acrobats, and they are ably supported by one of two teams of villagers, etc ensuring that the stage is never empty, but full of energetic dancing and singing.

There are jokes for everyone, bits of several panto stories and familiar routines and lots of action as our Stella grows up ignorant of her royal lineage, falls for the boy next door, develops an interest in mechanical gadgets and is lulled to sleep in the tower of Wardour Castle … for a bit of local colour.

I really shouldn’t tell you any more, so prepare to suspend your disbelief and head to the Playhouse for a hugely colourful, spectacular and entertaining – if perhaps over-long – show. A hint – never have TWO cast members asking the audience to welcome them to the stage each time they appear. It takes time and it never works. And much as you might like a reference to the Lego movie, the zombies add nothing to the action.

GP-W

Photographs by Pamela Raith.