Credit: Wes Webster Photography
The Christmas lights around the corner from The Lyceum said ‘Welcome To Christmas In Crewe’. It was certainly a wonderful welcome to the festive season watching Cinderella on press night.
The theme on the traditional tale sees Cinderella almost enslaved as a servant for Baroness Hardup and her two daughters ‘Aroma’ and ‘Flatula’. A chance meeting with Prince Charming sees them fall in love at first sight. Invited to the palace ball, Cinderella’s joy is short lived as the wicked stepsister thwart her plans to go to the ball. Will true love find a way?
Eve Parsons plays Cinderella and was absolutely excellent. A beautiful vocal performance both solo and with X-Factor’s Matt Terry (Prince Charming) and was a strong all round performance. Matt Terry was also as strong as Prince Charming with (as you would expect) great vocals. His first single in nearly five years, recently released ‘You Don’t Know Nothing’ and definitely worth a listen.
Familiar face, Malcolm Lord was, as ever, a welcome return. It would be impossible to guess what outfit he will appear on stage in next as he plays a number of characters in this production and his comedy timing is fantastic. His comedic foil again was Ste Johnston as Buttons, back for a second successive year after last year’s Aladdin. They were brilliant as a pair (especially the chaos in the beauty parlour) and gave many laugh out loud moments. Both had a fantastic rapport with the audience and breaking the fourth wall several times with jokes aplenty for both mums and dads as well as the kids, the laughs flowed from there. A shout-out to Ste for his extremely funny ‘Old MacDonald’ with younger members of the audience.
Eleanor Burke and Jordan Cambridge-Taylor were the villainous stepsisters ‘Aroma’ and ‘Flatula’ and were really great with the audience interaction and a high energy performance in some fantastic outfits.
The support from the ensemble and junior ensemble was excellent. With excellent dance routines, some wonderful expressions and really highlight the talent from everyone in the production.
A note to the music production and song choices, again excellent. The brilliant selection of feel-good tunes throughout and the wonderful ‘Blue’s Brothers’ medley at the end was a marvellous way to end the production.
A couple of additional things, The Lyceum have a wonderful dress-up area on floor 1 where children can take a few items from the box to pose in front of the lovely carriage on display for some memorable panto photos. Also, a shout out to the editors of the programme for its lovely contents of games, poems and word-searches, loads for little ones to do.
The whole production was a joy start to finish, it’s everything seasonal cheer should be. It’s exciting, hilarious, thrilling (the effects at the end of Act 1 were brilliant in particular), plenty of local humour, the costumes and sets shine and the cast add the final Christmas sparkle.
The production runs until 31st December and tickets are available here www.crewelyceum.co.uk
