ajhlovestheatre

SLEEPING BEAUTY TAKES A PRICK!

Written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper

Songs by Jon Bradfield

Directed by Andrew Beckett

Charing Cross Theatre, London – until 13 January 2024

https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk

If the title makes you wince, much of the content will really make your eyes water. Let’s be perfectly clear: Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! is puerile, crude and basic. It also has more genuine laugh-out-loud moments per scene than probably anything else on the London stage right now.

Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper’s adult pantomimes for Above The Stag had achieved something approaching cult status and the team’s offering for this festive season looks set to continue that tradition of merry smut and surprisingly high production values. Perhaps the biggest shock for the uninitiated is how much respect and know-how the creatives have for the traditions of panto. Far from just being an endless parade of unbridled single entendres and jokes about anal sex (although there’s plenty of all that), Sleeping Beauty has rhyming sections, the obligatory “there’s a ghost behind you” gag, well crafted songs, plenty of opportunities for the audience to boo and hiss, and, in Matthew Baldwin as world-weary, man-hungry Queen Gertrude, one of the classiest Dames in the business.

Baldwin is the real deal: screamingly funny but with an undertone of real pathos, his Gertrude treats her fellow cast members and the audience with a haughty disdain that the roaring, enraptured punters can’t get enough of. Every withering put-down and catty aside lands, every outrageous outfit is suitably outlandish: my favourite was a LGBTQ+ bastardisation of Cecil Beaton’s creation for Audrey Hepburn in the Ascot scene from the My Fair Lady film, although the tarted-up Marie Antoinette finale look was also spectacular. Crucially though, the comedy is never overplayed, which makes it all the more delightful, and one always feels that, for all the frivolity and salaciousness, there’s always something at stake for this marvellous monarch. As in previous years, Baldwin is worth the price of a ticket all by himself.

The casting throughout is strong: Chris Lane is suitably ripe and nasty as the baddie Prince Camembert, a priapic monster with killer comic timing and, according to Queen Gertrude, quite possibly tertiary stage syphilis. Tom Mann invests Prince Arry (the gender-swapped titular Beauty) with just the right combination of gormlessness and enthusiasm, and Jordan Stamatiadis is great fun as his perpetually randy fairy godmother. There are stand out turns also from Matthew Gent as a salt-of-the-earth stable man and his better off descendant (the plot straddles several centuries for reasons too convoluted to go into here), Nikki Biddington as his spirited daughter(s) and Myles Hart as a technicolored alien with a libido as pronounced as his Caribbean accent.

Any show that features parodies of My Fair Lady’s Ascot Gavotte and Jellicle Songs from Cats is clearly put together by a team that knows their musical theatre as well as their willy jokes and pantomime. For all the on-the-nose crudity of the humour, it’s interesting that the biggest laugh is arguably a gag about Beyoncé performing in Tottenham, and, outrageous as much of the script is, it’s seldom actually cruel. Andrew Beckett’s well judged production includes nifty choreography by Carole Todd and a fabulously garish Belle Époque-meets-traditional panto flats set by David Shields.

Unless you’re exceptionally prudish (and, really, what would you be doing at a show entitled Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick! if you’re easily offended?!), it’s pretty hard not to have a rollicking good time here. Swearing aside, most of the humour isn’t that far removed from what Julian Clary gets away with regularly in the annual Palladium extravaganza. Go for the dirty jokes and flamboyant performances, but you may be surprised at the amount of craft on display too. Huge fun, massive in fact.