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written and directed by Rob Torr

Torrent Productions, Royal Canadian Legion, 243 Coxwell Avenue, Toronto

December 21-30, 2018

Cinderella and Prince: “You’re the one that I want”

This is the third year that Torrent Productions has presented a panto at the Royal Canadian Legion at Gerrard and Coxwell and Cinderella: A Merry Magical Pantomime may be their funniest one yet.  Writer/director/producer Rob Torr has written a very clever twist to the familiar fairy tale, assembled a top-notch cast and has the cast maintain a constant interaction with the audience.  This last feature is the heart of pantomime and is what makes it such a favourite with children and different from all other types of theatre.  The audience participation at a Torrent panto has a variety and pervasiveness that the large-scale annual panto downtown never has attained.

You might think that after the hundreds of years of its existence every variation on the Cinderella story would already have been written.  Well, Rob Torr has written a new one and it is very ingenious.  Every panto must have a villain and in a Cinderella panto the villain is usually Cinderella’s wicked stepmother.  In Torr’s version, however, there is no stepmother and there is no fairy godmother.  And, even more unusual, there no Prince Charming. 

Torr has given the story a new Villain (Sean Wright), a magician who is so ashamed of his name he wants to keep it a secret.  Knowing the story that is destined to happen to Cinderella, he, out of pure spite, has banished Cinderella’s fairy godmother from the land and seems to be the only one who knows what has happened to the Prince.  The Villain’s goal is to force the story to end his way, not the traditional way.

If one were to apply literary criticism to Torr’s version, one would note that having a character in a story know that he is in a story and is trying to manipulate the plot towards a different ending is is highly metafictional and post-modern.  Intriguing as an intellectual analysis of Torr’s approach is, it is in no way necessary to be aware of it to enjoy the show.

Replacing Cinderella’s fairy godmother is a substitute Fairy (Erin Keaney) a ditzy and comically ineffective spirit.  She heard Cinderella’s fairy godmother’s distress call and has come to help even though it takes most of the show for her wand to recharge.  Scatter-brained as she may be, her presence gives the audience the notion that there is a power of good in the play to help combat the Villain’s evil.

Also present is the character Buttons (Gaelan Beatty), a tradition in British Cinderella pantos, a fellow servant in love with Cinders but too tongue-tied in her presence to tell her his feelings.  Following Rossini’s 1817 operatic version of the tale, Torr also includes the Prince’s valet Dandini (J.J. Gerber), although here Dandini goes about carrying out the Prince’s commands, like inviting people to the ball, even though he hasn’t see the Prince for days.

Otherwise, the basic story remains the same with Cinderella (Brittany Banks) being treated like a servant by her two stepsisters, here called Ivanta (Stuart Dowling) and Anita (Ryan Rogerson).  Cinderella’s ineffectual father Baron Hardup (Greg Campbell), looks on helplessly while the stepsisters mistreat Cinderella and waste his fortune.

Torr’s script is very smartly written with references to all the local sponsors in the Gerrard and Coxwell area and filled with an endless supply of terrible puns.  There is not too much risqué humour but children in the audience may well wonder why adults think it is so funny that Buttons keeps saying he doesn’t want anyone to touch his package. 

As he has done in the past, Torr works an old vaudeville routine into the show – here an illustration of a zero-sum game in which three people owe each other money but can only pay half of what is required.  Somehow, when that half-payment is passed around enough times, everyone is paid off and all is settled. Adults will have to watch this one closely.  It may seem crazy but it actually makes sense. 

In this panto Torr has also worked in for the first time the traditional panto convention of characters trying to sing their fear away while sitting on a bench.  A ghost appears behind them causing the children in the audience to go wild with warning the imperceptive characters about the danger nearby – “It’s right behind you!” – only to have them ignore them to their cost.

In fact, Torr insures that the interaction between the actors on stage and the audience never lets up.  He moves far beyond the mere booing of the villain to phrases welcoming certain characters, direct appeals to the audience for advice, fun battles of “Oh, yes it it” versus “Oh, no it isn’t” and much, much more.  The audience is not merely intellectually engaged in the story but constantly verbally engaged in the action. 

This is one of the pivotal features of pantomime and why it is presented during the holidays.  The show represents a reversal of power where children are no longer meant to be seen but not heard but rather are encouraged not only to be heard but given permission to shout out their criticisms of the adults on stage and empowered to call out wickedness and praise goodness when they see it.

Torrent Productions has assembled an especially fine cast for Cinderella.  Brittany Banks, who has clear bright voice and a bright personality to match makes a fine Cinderella.  Her Cinderella has too sunny an outlook on what is important in life to  let her silly stepsisters ruin her mood.  Probably her most memorable scenes are her singing the Carpenters’ song “Sing” (i.e. “Sing a Song”) accompanied by a choir of stuffed animals (i.e. happy forest creatures), Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” before the ball and her surprising performance at the dance competition at the Prince’s Ball where she hoists up her ball gown and launches into a fantastic step dance routine.

Shawn Wright, well known from both the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, is luxury casting as the Villain.  He may never have played a panto villain before, but you’d never know it by how he seems to thrive on the audience’s booing only to hurl out insults while suggesting that, like most bullies, he can’t take what he dishes out.  His underlying indecision is reflected in his main song, a growling rendition of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”.  Wright’s Villain is comically reduced to a puddle of ignominy when he is finally forced to admit his real, quite embarrassing name.

Erin Keaney is hilarious as Cinderella’s dim-witted substitute Fairy Godmother.  Keaney has no trouble speaking in rhyming couplets, but the Fairy admits that the plot is so complicated she needs cue cards to help her.  Cue cards suddenly appear and either they were written by someone afflicted with spoonerism or the Fairy has major difficulties in reading since she constantly transposes consonants and tells us of “Rindercella”, a “pandsome Hince” and “bancy fall”.  Both children and adults have fun sorting out what the poor Fairy is trying to say. 

Stuart Dowling, in his third Torrent panto, and Ryan A. Rogerson in his first are suitably superficial and self-centred as Cinderella’s stepsisters Ivanta and Anita.  What the kids in the audience thought was especially funny was the sisters’ continual claim that they are identical twins, even though Ivanta towers over Anita, and that people can’t tell them apart.  In this context the duo’s signature song, Irving Berlin’s “Sisters”, is especially amusing as is their attempt at “interpretative dance” at the Prince’ ball.

As Buttons, Gaelan Beatty, who has performed primarily out west, is a real find.  Good-looking, with a fine, full voice and a beaming stage presence, he immediately wins the audience’s sympathy as the poor valet hopelessly in love with the equally poor Cinderella.  As a tantalizing taste of how good Beatty must be in classic musicals, he gave fine accounts of Gershwin’s “Things Are Looking Up” and Charles Strouse’s “Put on a Happy Face”.  Beatty even managed to make the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” sound like a classic tune. 

As Baron Hardup, Greg Campbell, in his third Torrent panto, provides a major source of comedy throughout.  Kids were especially exasperated by Hardup’s inability, despite their fervent warnings, to see the threatening ghost right behind him four times in a row.

J.J. Gerber is vibrant and self-confident as Dandini, who goes about fulfilling the Prince’s last orders despite his mysterious disappearance.  Gerber gives the most exciting male performance of the evening with his rousing version of Pink’s “Get This Party Started” complete with breakdance and hip-hop moves, all the more remarkable given the smallness of the Legion stage.

Like other Torrent pantos, Cinderella has only a two-piece band which sometimes over-shadows the singers and cleverly used painted screens as sets.  But what a Torrent panto may lack in high-end production values it more than makes up for in sheer, unadulterated fun.  No amount of LED-light board generated scenery can make up for the constant audience interaction that a Torrent panto encourages and that keeps kids on the edge of their seats.  Entrances through the audience and the traditional chase through the audience are thrilling because they give kids such close contact with the performers.  Kids can even pose for photos with the performers after the show. 

I had the privilege of attending Cinderella with three generations of the same family.  Looking about me it was impossible to say which of the three generations was having the most fun.  The panto gives kids undiluted fun and literally asks that their voices be heard.  For adults the panto provides the chance to see the world through children’s eyes again, throw restraint to the winds and laugh at the silliest things imaginable.  This was my third Torrent panto and each one has been the most enjoyable stage show of the year.  I can’t wait till the next one.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Brittany banks as Cinderella; Erin Keaney as Fairy and Sean Wright as Villain; Stuart Dowling as Ivanta, J.J. Gerber as Dandini and Ryan R. Rogerson as Anita. ©2018 Rob Torr.

For tickets, visit www.torrentproductions.com/index.html.