Theatre review: Cinderella! A Traditional British Pantomime makes for a full-on experience
Metro Theatre’s holiday production brims with over-the-top ridiculousness and laugh-out-loud humour
Cinderella! A Traditional British Pantomime.
Metro Theatre presents Cinderella! A Traditional British Pantomime to January 5
ONE ENDEARING HOLIDAY tradition in the Vancouver stage scene is Metro Theatre’s British pantomime. This year, the company takes on Cinderella, and it sparkles with all the humour, energy, and fun that audiences have come to love from the annual show.
Written by director Shel Piercy and Jo Sears, this version of Cinderella is also a much different take on the well-known fairy tale, offering strong and encouraging messages of female empowerment.
True to its word, Metro’s show is authentic to British pantos in every way. A radiant Alyson Vance leads as the heroine. An appropriately over-the-top Matt Ramer, dressed in drag, plays the “dame”, equipped with an amount of jokes and puns equal to the volume of makeup he wears. We also have the battle between good and evil in Mary Cleaver’s eloquent Good Fairy and Terrance Zhou’s sinister but loveable Demon.
True to form, the entire show is interactive, with the actors always breaking the fourth wall and encouraging the audience to cheer, boo, and shout things like “It’s behind you!” to warn the characters of menacing dangers.
Another panto tradition is for the male hero to be played by a female. That’s done wonderfully here by an earnest Tirion Jones as Lou Buttons, a character written as a nod to famed shoe designer Louboutin. Moreover, the on-stage relationship between Jones and Vance is so sweet that it goes beyond comedy and proves that great actors can play any gender they wish and evoke genuine emotional reception from audiences.
One of the more prominent twists to Piercy and Sears’s story is Cinderella’s ambition to go to university and make a positive difference to the world. However, a major challenge she faces is that in the kingdom where the story is set, females legally have less power than males. This makes for a great underlying subplot throughout the show.
As is the norm in pantos, the songs are a curated selection of well-known tunes across a range of genres that have been specially arranged—in this case, by musical director Arielle Balance—to fit the show. This includes Vance’s lovely performance of “I’ve Got Rhythm”, where she dances a tap duet with her horse, Hairy Trotter (Breanna Cruz and Zhou). If this seems hard to envision, that’s understandable—you’ll just have to wait until you can enjoy seeing how this is done in person. As well, in keeping with the trend of incorporating pop culture into pantos, the ball scene features a fabulous number with Vance and the company that samples Charli XCX’s “Apple”, complete with the viral TikTok dance.
Fans of the TV show Only Murders in the Building will get a hoot out of seeing the Emmy-winning song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It” inserted with playful absurdity. Ramer masters the tune’s complicated, tongue-twisting lyrics, as three performers dressed in Christina Sinosich’s comical baby costumes perform Shelley Stewart Hunt’s amusing choreography.
Does this song make sense within the context of Cinderella? Absolutely not. Nor do the references to “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago, and that’s exactly the point. From start to finish, Cinderella brims with over-the-top ridiculousness and it makes for great entertainment.
Hunt’s choreography ranges from classic musical theatre stylings, such as in “Sisters” from White Christmas, to shimmies and sassy attitude in the ball scene, which also includes a nod to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club”.
Sinosich’s costumes make every performer (with perhaps the exception of the dame) look like they’ve been plucked from a fairy tale, especially the gorgeous visual of Vance in her ballgown. And while Francesca Albertazzi’s set design offers some beautiful elements, such as a backdrop of the woods on a wintery night, it never takes itself too seriously. In keeping with the panto genre, we also see set-piece cut-outs and silly signs.
Audiences can expect to participate in the singing of “Twelve Days of Christmas” with the cast. It’s an interactive moment in Metro’s pantos that always livens up the crowd, and this year’s sing-along is no exception. The moment is indicative of Metro’s Cinderella overall—it’s not simply a show. It’s a whole experience that will have you laughing and enjoying the good cheer that comes with celebrating the holidays and the humour in life itself.
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