There is something very special indeed about Chichester Festival Youth Theatre led by the extraordinary Dale Rooks and with 800 members from all over Sussex. For a start CFT is the only major theatre in the UK which hands its main stage to the Youth Theatre every Christmas and mounts a show with full Chichester production values. And the standards achieved are phenomenal.

Rooted in the original Perrault story and written by Rufus Norris, this Sleeping Beauty is dark, mysterious and magical – it sits in flavour somewhere between A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Don Giovanni and The BFG. Director Lucy Betts, herself a former CFYT member works adeptly with a huge cast: 200 performers with alternating principals to maximise opportunites for all.

This story begins with a kind-ish fairy (Emily McAlpine – compelling) looking for a Prince to waken the princess she has put to sleep for a long time, in a now regretted fit of chagrin. There are flashbacks to explain with younger and older versions of Goody, the fairy. Her first attempt fails but she does better the second time. The second half takes the story in a different direction involving a baby-gobbling ogress (Megan Bewley – splendid) and other not-for-the-faint-hearted developments.

Along the way we get some fabulous music composed by Tom Brady and played on a high platform above the stage by a fine five-piece band led by MD, Colin Billing. Much of it is folksy and or witty and it’s all atmospheric. I particularly liked the Just Say No song. Performed by six exceptionally slick and funny palace guards of varying sizes, it could have come straight out of G&S.

Then there’s some immaculate chorus song and dance work with, for example, a team of slaves, a large group of forest animals and a human forest of green thorns. And there’s a lot of swinging on ropes on Simon Higlet’s spikey, disturbing, aboreal set. The base Perrault story was called The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods a concept which has clearly underpinned many of the design ideas.

We are, though, actually in a timeless place where characters speak modern English, often sounding quite sassy and sharp. Some – Fairy Goody, for instance – have a slight idiolect.

Hal Darling, whom I’ve seen at Chichester several times before is totally natural and convincing as a worried king who can’t stand up to his appalling wife (Molly Berry – good). They’re a couple we’ve all met. Not for the first time, I hope Darling has an agent and/or is going onto drama school. His talent deserves to be seen much more of.

George Waller is strong as the prince who is so terrified by the idea of waking a sleeping princess that he runs away in alarm and Joe Russell is fun as the macho prince who initially says “I don’t like girls” (suggesting to me and most of the audience, I expect, that this play was going to morph into a 2018 story) before deciding that perhaps he’d have a look and then waking the princess under the Fairy’s supervision. Soon they’ve got a couple of babies … As his mother says, on her son’s return with his family: “You’ve been a long time hunting.”

Izzy Richardson plays a fine and feisty princess, rebelling against her over protective parents like any modern teenager and then becoming a very worried (with good cause) mother.

All in all this is a very original and highly enjoyable show – and a wonderful credit to CFTY and everyone involved with it.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Chichester%20Festival%20Theatre%20(professional)-Sleeping%20Beauty&reviewsID=3438

★★★★★

This engaging and entertaining show manages to be both traditional and fresh so that you never know quite what will happen next. Musically it includes Jailhouse Rock, Carmina Burana, The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba, the compulsory-for-2018 Baby Shark and lots more. It’s faultlessly eclectic as well as making Aurora (Natasha Hoeberigs) feisty, creating a compelling character in Herman the Henchman (Ben Ofoedu) and having a cracking live band (led by Alex Williams) under the stage. Moreover, I’ve seenThe Twelve Days of Christmas, pantomime style, many times but rarely one as funny as this. I agonised all the way back to south London about the star rating and finally decided that the dragon (no spoilers but he’s terrific) gets it the fifth one.

Everyone in the cast shines, including the team of very-well-trained children in the ensemble. James Fletcher, diminutively boyish as Lester the Jester has a very appealing way of catching the audience’s eye when he makes a joke or remark. He knows exactly how to exploit a part like this. It’s a fine performance – his LAMDA training really shows.

Nicola Hume is attractively unassuming but assertive as Fairy Good Heart and Nicole Faraday cackles and sneers – great lip-lifting technique – as Carabosse in black fishnets, masses of eye-darkening makeup and a great deal of pewter clothing. Ofedu plays her halfwitted hechman shuffling about and speaking exaggerated cockney. What a stroke of genius also to give him a very lively (everyone on the audience on their feet and dancing) DJ spot too. As someone in the script comments: “You could make a living at this.”

James Dinsmore makes King Joseph, Aurora’s father, seem more fatherly and reasonable and a lot less wet than such a character usually is. And the spot in which he morphs into another take on The King and does a medley of Elvis Presley songs is lovely theatre. As Nurse Nora, Hywel Dowsell is less camp than some panto dames but he’s very watchable and I liked the way his (presumably) natural Welsh accent comes through.

Hoeberigs looks very pretty and sings beautifully. Her full belt is quite something. Sean Smith is a strong Prince Rupert with a fine voice and the sort of manner – dishy but decent – which enables us to see why she might fall for him so readily. Their duet singing is splendid.

Unusually – it’s another way in which this panto is original – the four person professional dance ensemble is all male and they are very good indeed. They’re dazzlingly fast and extraordinarily lithe in the dance numbers as well as singing in chorus sections and taking minor speaking roles.

Yes, this really is a top-notch pantomime – and certainly the best I’ve seen so far this year. Well done director Nick Mowat and everyone he is working with at Horsham.

★★★★

Unlike most critics, who were lukewarm about it, I liked this Stiles and Drewe musical take on The Wind in the Willows when it opened last year at the Palladium with Rufus Hound as Toad, and I still do. The music is attractive, if sometimes predictable, and Julian Fellowes’ book brings ungimmicky freshness to Kenneth Grahame’s novel.

And it’s all in pretty good hands with Trinity Theatre Productions which has certainly upped its game now that artistic director John Martin (who also directs this energetic show) has found ways of making this delightful – but once troubled – venue operate viably. For The Wind in the Willows a small orchestra pit has been created at the front of the stage to accommodate a fine five-piece live band – the first time I’ve heard anything other than recorded music in a Trinity production. There are no fewer than thirteen professionals in the cast working with a young ensemble of five for which there are two teams. Moreover the foyer has had a facelift and now looks both welcoming and seriously professional.

Brook Adam’s Chief Weasel – in white suit with black and white spivvy shoes – is pitched somewhere the mafiosa and East End gangland and he brings lots of well observed charismatic sliminess to the role. Ian Chapman’s badger has a rich, 85% cocoa solids voice which gives him all the right gravitas for the part. Ashton Charge is an insouciant Ratty with an estuary manner, lots of charm and all the decency the character calls for. And he plays nicely off Jamie Scott-Smith’s kindly, bespectacled Mole.

As Toad, Alistair Brown, is of course a thousand miles over the top because that’s the only way you can play it. He’s fun to watch, though, with an impressive range of faces, attitudes and moods. And he looks very, very green. Where can I buy a green bob wig like his?

Also noteworthy are Alexandra Burns as Mrs Hedgehog (and, it may have nothing much to do with the plot, but I enjoyed the Hedgehog song as much as I did when I first heard it) and other roles. Scarlett Leigh Fawcett, who is becoming a Trinity regular, is good value as Portia, the young otter who keeps getting lost and is then kidnapped, and Sara Louisa Parry’s singing in several roles is lovely.

Full marks too to Andy Newell’s sets which include a pretty, riverside backdrop and some simple but effective flats on castors which present, for example, Toad Hall and the underground homes of Badger and Mole.

I saw this show with a huge school party which occupied nearly the whole of the lower stalls. The level of engagement from these ten and eleven year olds suggests that they enjoyed it as much as I did.

★★★

Prime Pantomimes’ inaugural show is very inclusive. The cast is fifty percent BAME (black, Asian, minority ethnic) which I really like. I also approve of the Emperor having morphed into a feisty Empress – Melissa Nettleford who doubles as a lively Spirit of the Ring and sings well.

So, Selladoor in collaboration with Immersion Theatre which are behind the new company, have made an interesting start. James Tobias’ Aladdin script is crisp, very light on innuendo and full of suitably corny, and mostly ancient puns although even I giggled at mourning for a husband, Gav, who died of heartburn because, well, Gaviscon.

This is Duane Gooden’s panto dame debut and he really makes Widow Twankey his own – flirting, simpering and looking silly in outrageous outfits in the traditional way – but also bringing a delicious freshness to it all, complete with Caribbean accent, so that it doesn’t feel imitative or stereotyped.

Unusually both Aladdin (Luke Street) and Wishee Washee (Samuel Freeman) are strong and they work exceptionally well together with lots of charisma, repartee and excellent movement work.

Wayne Rollins is clearly enjoying himself as Abanazar (whose ultimate punishment is to be made to work for Lewisham Borough Council) using gravelly RP between the malevolent cackles except when he falls amusingly out of it and into “estuary.”

There’s a plenty of fun in this panto with lots of local jokes and asides as it seeks to bed itself into the area exactly as the Hackney Empire panto has done for decades. And it delivers the traditional elements in spades including a good ghost (mummies, actually, as it’s Aladdin) scene played with all the right rhythmic repetitions

The music (played live on keys and drums) is, however, bone-shakingly loud and the balance is often awry. There were lots of instances of singing being almost drowned out by the band – at least in Row S where I was sitting. And the sets and designs are a bit lack lustre.

★★

Having sat through 135 minutes of The Double Dealer I now understand why it wasn’t a hit when it premiered in 1693 and has never been popular since. It’s the sort of piece which might, just might, fly with very imaginative reworking. And everyone involved with this production has clearly worked long and hard but, I regret to say, with only limited success.

Like all Restoration Comedies it’s a complicated, convoluted plot which involves an awful lot of lusting after the “wrong” people. It takes until the interval to work out who everybody is, despite director Selina Cadell’s ingenious attempt to get round this by making characters appear when they’re mentioned at the beginning by way of visual introduction. And it helps not at all that fine actor Zoe Waites is doubling two characters: one a clean young woman in love and the other a cross, sexually predatory older woman. Waites uses two voices and manners but they are insufficiently distinctive to allay confusion and her costume changes (some very quick) are far too subtle.

The very best thing in this rather show is Jenny Rainsford as Lady Pliant a character who tries (and fails) to disguise neediness as assertiveness. Rainsford captures the unsubtle randiness perfectly and hilariously with neatly nuanced Meg Ryan moments. Moreover she has a wonderful way of glancing round at the audience (in the round and very close in the intimacy of The Orange Tree) to make them complicit. It’s a bravura performance.

Also strong are Paul Reid as the simpering, daft Lord Froth and Edward MacLiam as the outwardly warm, dastardly, duplicitous Maskwell – all bows, sweet talk and revelatory soliloquy.

I like the use of Purcell’s original score although it’s a pity more isn’t made of the live viol which accompanied the play’s single song. It was tucked away on the gallery and invisible to most of the audience.

Also commendable is the staging which makes interesting use of the Orange Tree’s spiral staircase and the space behind the audience in the gallery. The costumes (Rosaling Ebbutt) are attractive too: lots of brocade, velvet, flat fronts, lacing along with long coats for men and shoes with ribbon bows. And when Dharmesh Patel strips to a pair of modern bright yellow underpants it really is very funny.

Some good points then but none of it prevented this wordy piece from seeming awfully long and even more inconsequential than plays of this period usually are. The witty new prologue written by Selina Cadell and Eliza Thompson and delivered by three women actors makes fun of the play’s nonsensical nature but doesn’t actually mean that it’s then acceptable to wallow in the triviality of it all.

And on press night there seemed to be a major text problem. There were an inordinate number of stumblings and repetitions which suggested that the cast weren’t, for what ever reason, quite able to support each other as they normally would. It culminated in MacLiam drying spectacularly, calling for a line, being greeted by silence and having to run off stage to get his line. Something was definitely not right.

Photo: Robert Day