Skip to main content
Morning Star Conference
Sleeping Beauty, Lawrence Batley Theatre Huddersfield
Pleasurable panto with a traditional touch

SLEEPING Beauty reunites the creative partnership of writer Andrew Pollard and producer Joyce Branagh for the fourth consecutive year in Huddersfield, with their experience and enthusiasm shining strongly in a pantomime packed with regional gags, double entendres and audience interaction.

The cast of familiar faces from previous productions underpins the exuberance, with the easy rapport between performers a joy to watch. It's particularly evident when Robin Simpson as Nanny Fanny and Nicola Jayne Ingram as Hester the Jester humorously ad lib to cover audience interventions and fluffed lines.

Such moments are key drivers in a production that, on paper at least, has questionable pacing and a plot that only broadly stays true to the original fairy story.

In a female-centric narrative, the villainous Belladonna Bile (Hayley Russell) puts a curse on Princess Aurora (Alyce Liburd) that makes her fall asleep for 100 years. No-one's passive victim, she's more than capable of looking after herself, with the support of Fairy Falalala (Esther-Grace Button).

There are no whizz-bang effects in the show — the biggest wow moment being a large billowing dragon — but it has plenty of imaginative charm. Mark Walters' stage design resembles a children's glitter book and Chris Brearley's lighting is magical when he creates the appearance of vines twining around the royal castle.

The soundtrack and cultural references are largely geared towards the adults — a medley for the Princess's 18th birthday includes ABBA and Chic, while there are nods to Mary Poppins as Fairy Falalala descends from the ceiling, and to Dirty Dancing, in a duet between Nanny and Richard Hand's King Herbert the Hesitant.

There's nonetheless plenty of colourful action and hijinks to appeal to younger members of the audience, despite Bile's threat that she “hates kids more than joy!”

Runs until January 6, box office: thelbt.org

 

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
tambo
Theatre review / 16 May 2025
16 May 2025

SUSAN DARLINGTON is bowled over by an outstanding play about the past, present and future of race and identity in the US

Jonathan Hanks in A Christmas Carol
Theatre Review / 23 December 2024
23 December 2024
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys, with minor reservations, the Northern Ballet’s revival of its 1992 classic
Tristan Sturrock and Katy Owen in Emma Rice’s Blue Beard
Theatre review / 6 March 2024
6 March 2024
SUSAN DARLINGTON revels in an exhilarating adaptation of the gruesome fairytale that invokes the real-life horror of women lost to male violence
(L to R) Eddie Ahrens, Rachel Hammond, Hannah Baker and Harv
Theatre Review / 23 May 2023
23 May 2023
SUSAN DARLINGTON is disappointed by a show that aims to highlight misogyny within the police but fails to arrest the audience's attention
Similar stories
FRIEND OR ANEMONE? Liana Cottrill as The Little Mermaid
Theatre Review / 12 December 2024
12 December 2024
SIMON PARSONS is swept away on the running tide of a dynamic new version of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale
Nikki Cheung as Karen in the Red Shoes
Theatre review / 18 November 2024
18 November 2024
GORDON PARSONS is filled with unease by the RSC’s offering of a brutal fairytale for Christmas
DREAM-LIKE​​​​​​​: Alfred Enoch as Pericles
Theatre review / 21 August 2024
21 August 2024
GORDON PARSONS applauds a production which turns a Jacobean obscurity into a dreamlike journey
Book Review / 13 August 2024
13 August 2024
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a collection of folk tales, each of which is dazzling flash of human experience, natural or supernatural