BUTTONS: A CINDERELLA STORY ☆☆☆☆

Charles Court Opera  @ Kings Head Theatre

It’s panto season and Charles Court Opera’s take on the Cinderella Story twists the traditional narrative into glorious, gender-bending lewd fun in their offering at the King’s Head  Theatre (till Jan 5th). In this gloriously topsy-turvy version, Buttons is a toy bear who loves Cinderella but can’t tell her because he is a toy, and voiceless.

Feckless Cinderella (Eleanor Sanderson-Nash), meanwhile, dreams of being rescued from the poverty and drudgery of living with her mother on a dairy farm, longing for her Prince Charming to appear. Written and directed by John Savourin, who also puts in a fantastically bawdy performance as Cinders’ mother, Betty Swollocks, the script delivers on laughs and joyful absurdism, while musical director David Eaton serves up some hilarious reworkings of pop classics such as Bohemian Rhapsody, Single Ladies (“get your pinny ready!”), and Creep.

All the performances are strong and the singing is flawless, with stand-out performances by Jennie Jacobs as the Machiavellian Prince Charming, pretending to be ‘woke’ to get Cinders whilst secretly killing the mythical creatures that dwell in the Magic Forest in order to maintain the spell keeps him handsome. Jacobs’ high-energy blend of principal boy and pantomime villain is compelling, whilst Matthew Kellett’s Buttons is adorably cute, especially when he sings Radiohead’s Creep.

The entire cast give it their all and maintain the carnivalesque energy throughout, so if you’re looking for some rude festive cheer, get down to the King’s Head. Just don’t sit on the front row if you don’t want to be dragged on stage for a Generation Game-style baking competition.

N.B. Pantomime is quintessentially English and is a theatrical entertainment, mainly for children, that involves music, topical jokes, and slapstick comedy and is based on a fairy tale or nursery story, usually produced around Christmas. It is also very camp and that is why it has now been adopted so enthusiatically for gay consumption

 

Review by Jonathan Kemp

Queerguru London Correspondent Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).