Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✩✩
by Reid Janisse, directed by Tracey Flye
Ross Petty Productions, Elgin Theatre, Toronto
November 27, 2014-January 4, 2015
“At Least You Get Home Before Midnight”
For its 19th annual holiday season panto, Ross Petty Productions is presenting a new production of Cinderella. Writer Reid Janisse’s updating of the fairy tale to present day Toronto is a clever idea executed in a clumsy fashion. Janisse gives the story an overly complicated set-up that prevents the familiar plot from kicking in for nearly a half hour. Once the plot does get going, it moves swiftly enough although the cast don’t encourage as much audience participation as they could – and it’s audience participation that makes pantos so enjoyable for children.
Janisse begins the show with a completely unnecessary prologue. Dwayne (Eddie Glen) and Zane (Janisse himself) are two slacker kids who belong to a Hogwarts-like school. Professor Yongenbloor (Dan Chameroy) want to tell the story of Cinderella the tradition way. Dwayne and Zane want to tell it a more modern way. They let the audience vote and, of course, the two faux-teens win out over the stuffy professor. As if this were not slow enough, the trio are given a rap number besides. Kids will likely pick up from the school crest and from Yongenbloor’s academic gown that his character is some offshoot of Professor Dumbledore. But what gradeschoolers are going to know that Dwayne and Zane are based on Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in the movie Wayne’s World from 1991?
In Dwayne and Zane’s updated version, Cinderella (Danielle Wade) spends her days running the organic vegetable stall in St. Lawrence Market that her late father left her. Contrary to any other Cinderella, this one has a staff of people who work for her. As one would expect, Cinderella is disliked by her stepmother Revolta Bulldoza (Ross Petty) and her two stepsisters Nastine (Bryn McAuley) and Shakiki (Cleopatra Williams). But the traditional idea that Cinderella slaves for them has gone out the window. We feel sympathy for her because we know we are supposed to because her name is Cinderella, not because of what we see on stage.
After trying to establish all of this, Janisse then has to give us his new take on Prince Charming. The character is now the world-famous teen singing heartthrob Max Charming (Jeff Lillico). Janisse shows us about three times in succession how Max doesn’t care for the screaming groupies who surround him because they are in “love” only with his image, not with him. Finally, after two songs too many, Max convinces his manager Dan Dini (Janisse again) to let him roam the streets of Toronto incognito. Finally, he bumps into Cinderella, the two fall in love at first sight, and, without revealing his identity, he asks her to come to the Eligi-Ball, a fundraising reality show event that Max is hosting where the girl he chooses will get to go on a date with him.
Now the action of the fairy tale can start, but even then it is held up by an extensive section devoted to Cinderella’s fairy godmother who just happens to be Dan Chameroy playing his beloved kooky-looking man-hungry character Plumbum for the sixth time. Plumbum first appeared as one of Cinderella’s stepsisters the last time Petty staged the panto in 2008.
Since Janisse has taken Cinders out of her usual rat-infested kitchen and doesn’t want to suggest that the St. Lawrence Market is riddled with vermin, he is at a loss how to replace them. This requires the introduction of yet more characters, this time in the form of a yardful of garden gnomes. Once all this exposition is dealt with, Plumbum is free to transform them into the lovely coach and horses and footman who accompany Cinders to the ball ending the 90-minute-long Act 1.
A new design feature of this panto is a giant LED screen that covers the entire back wall of the stage. Here projection designers Beth Kates and Ben Chaisson create the modern equivalent of scenic backdrops that have the advantages of changing instantly, shining brightly and displaying innumerable complex effects, like bombs shooting from magic wands, too complex for most conventional technology. Kate and Chaisson also use traditional front projection on walls flown to midstage and on the front curtain itself. Front projection is also used on a drop down screen for a series of commercials that punctuate the action. These commercials featuring characters from the panto used to be show in clumps in the first and second acts, but now they appear on a regular basis very much as if one where watching television. They would be annoying expect that they are so well done that they are often funnier than the material they interrupt.
The cast is very well chosen. Petty, Eddie Glen in his 11th panto, here as Cinderella’s pal Buttons, and Dan Chameroy now form a team. Glen and Chameroy now receive as much if not more applause than Petty, who seems content to soak up the boos that arise whenever he appears. Chameroy’s Plumbum, a truly hilarious creation, now has more stage time than Petty’s villains, and Chameroy’s improvisations are often wittier than anything in the script. Add that to his gift for physical comedy and his running commentary on his own and others’ performances, and Plumbum has now become the centre of the show.
Eddie Glen, however, is no slouch. He has the acting-to-the-audience style of panto down perfectly. And in improvisational matches of wit with Petty or Chameroy, he wins every time.
After two years as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Danielle Wade is now completely at home on stage and is a plucky and endearing Cinderella. Most Cinderellas would not have the attitude to pull off a fine rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”, but Wade certainly does.
As the stepsister, Bryn McAuley and Cleopatra Williams are virtually indistinguishable with the same look, gestures and deliberately ear-grating voices. Some productions try to differentiate the sisters, but here where the goal is uniform obnoxiousness, the two are perfectly matched.
Even though Cinderella had had a week of previews before it opened, actors did not yet realize or were not encouraged to stop the show for audience participation as often as they could have. Kids who have seen Petty’s pantos before are trained to boo him whenever he appears, but there are other kinds of participation that are more interesting. One time when Chameroy as Plumbum enters, she keeps stumbling over the name of the girl she is supposed to help. Eventually the kids shouted “Cinderella” to her but he made little of it. He could have repeated the name back to them incorrectly to encourage them to shout it again correctly, but he did not. Later in the show, Jeff Lillico as Max Charming is offered a Hypno-Chip to eat. Much of the audience shouted out “No!” when he said the chip looked good, but he downed it without making it a point of participation. I still fondly remember when Melissa Thomson as Snow White in 2001 asked the audience several times whether she should eat the poisoned apple, only to receive heartfelt cries of "No!" and "Don't do it!" If he had been directed to do so, Lillico could have done the same before biting into his tainted chip because the audience was clearly ready to warn him – but he let the moment pass.
In the past several pantos, directors seem to have forgotten how important it is in this form to make children feel they are directly involved in the action. If a character like Snow White or Prince Charming makes a wrong decision, the audience will know that at least it gave them a clear warning. Let’s hope that forms of participation other than booing the villain develop in Cinderella as the run continues because the potential is certainly there. At present the show’s zippy conclusion, where there is a mad chase for Plumbum’s magic wand almost, but not quite, makes up for the show’s snoozy beginning.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Jeff Lillico, Danielle Wade, Dan Chameroy and Eddie Glen (centre) with dancers; Cleopatra Williams, Ross Petty and Bryn McAuley; Danielle Wade and Jeff Lillico. ©2014 Racheal McCaig.
For tickets, visit http://rosspetty.com/tickets/tickets.
2014-11-29
Cinderella: The Gags to Riches Family Musical!