Cinderella Reviews

Director Ted Dysktra is next up for praise. The show features a lot of his inspired insanity, but none of his annoying looseness. We probably have choreographer Tracey Flye to thank for a lot of the slick pace because the show is movement driven, with her trademark ability to mock pop forms while executing them with panache.

The whole ballroom scene is an extended parody of So You Think You Can Dance and you haven't lived till you've seen Petty and four unwilling chorus boys do a mambo that sets sex back at least 60 years.

Steve Ross's lighting scintillates and Erika Connor's costumes are a treat.

But best of all is the cast. I've already talked about how hilarious Brazier and Chameroy, two of the butchest men in showbiz, are as the evil stepsisters and Petty has never been more in control as the Wicked Stepmother. With his balcony-like bosom and shoe-polish black hair, you'd swear he was channelling Barbara Amiel.

Paula Brancati is a winningly feisty Cinderella, Jake Epstein the hunkiest of all Prince Charmings and Eddie Glen combines huggability and muggability in Buttons.

But best of all is Patty Sullivan's Fairy Godmother. Years of working on children's television programs has taught her just how to talk to young audiences, but her decades of musical theatre experience have enabled her to sing and shine with real class. She's got a sweet, sweet spirit that illuminates the whole show.

Cinderella is a smashing time for everyone from four to 94.

Make sure you don't miss it.

If panto were an Olympic sport, then one suspects Ross Petty has been slowly assembling a gold medal team over the past decade and more.

And, this year, that team has put together what even the most venal French judge would have to judge a gold medal routine.

It's called Cinderella: The Sillylicious Family Musical and it opened at the Elgin Theatre Thursday in what is almost certain to be a too-brief run, once the word gets around.

And that word will be "great": From script to direction to casting, this Cinderella may be wearing glass slippers, but the rest of her is pure gold.

The script is courtesy of playwright Chris Earle who, after last year's Peter Pan misfire, has finally found the philosopher's stone when it comes to transforming the dross of well-worn fairytales into pure panto fools' gold, stripping the meat off the bones of a well-worn story and padding it out with a mix of songs and silliness that will have 'em rolling in the aisles throughout the holidays.

From a fairy godmother with short-term memory problems to a cootie-driven lass carriage, Earle combines the familiar with the sublimely ridiculous with such a deft touch that it all becomes fresh and new and, best of all, delightful.

Once Earle finished working his magic, Petty then handed it over to director Ted Dykstra, and he, too, seems to have plugged straight into the panto ethos, polishing Earle's script until it shines like a new penny.

To accomplish this, Dykstra and Petty have assembled a flawless cast and transformed it into an impressive piece of panto machinery.

To carry the love story that sits at the story's heart, they've recruited Paula Brancati as a thoroughly modern Cinderella, opposite Jake Epstein's rocking Prince George, both of whom shine. Perhaps the final testament to their skill is they can hold their own against everything this panto can throw at them.

That would include that aforementioned fairy godmother (winningly played by Patty Sullivan in a stunning professional debut) and Cinderella's loyal and loveable sidekick (played by veteran Eddie Glen), both of whom give performances certain to charm, as do Karen LeBlanc and Laurie Murdock in supporting roles.

But mostly, the silliness comes courtesy of Cinderella's wicked stepmother, the buxom Bertha Von Botox (Petty himself) and her two strapping daughters, Carnivia (Adam Brazier) and Plumbum (Dan Chameroy) -- a trio of thesps who cheerfully remind us at every turn what a key role "drag" plays in the phrase: "What the cat dragged in."

Sporting a front porch that would be the envy of any southern plantation house, Petty is a cloying vision in mephitidaen black and white, with just a touch of purple passion, while Brazier and Chameroy conspire with costume designer Erika Connor to put colour blindness at the top of a lot of Santa Wish Lists.

Happily, their performances are even more fearless than their costumes, with Brazier and Chameroy plumbing the depths of vacuity with all-out verve and leaving it to Petty to prove that, while wife Karen Kain may not be the only one in the family who dances, she's most definitely the only one who dances well.

Of course, there's lot of audience participation and music, "inspired by" a range of pop hits and, thanks to choreographer Tracey Flye, there's also some pretty spiffy dancing that shows off the chorus to perfection. And, yes, there's even the obligatory nod to corporate sponsors, this year carried to such delicious heights that the panto could become the Super Bowl of must-see Christmas advertising.

Most of all, there's plenty of Petty in a panto that flirts constantly with theatrical disaster, but never succumbs, soaring to ever-higher heights of Petty-propelled silliness without ever going completely over the top.

Christmas, they tell us, is for kids, and if you ever needed a reminder that, at heart, we are all kids -- and occasionally, who of us doesn't? -- Cinderella: The Sillyicious Family Musical is just the ticket.

Cinderella - The Sillylicious Family Musical
Adapted by Chris Earle
Directed by Ted Dykstra
Starring Paula Brancati, Jake Epstein, Ross Petty

In the upside-down, inside-out world of Ross Petty's fractured fairy tales, booing is a sign that you're enjoying yourself. The louder you hiss at Petty's evil pantomime dame - this year, he is Cinderella's fugly stepmother Bertha von Botox - the more you encourage her to ham it up. Essentially, the critic is disarmed; any shots I could fire would be blanks.

So, best to just go along with it. A sugary cereal comprised of camp, corn and stock characters borrowed from British panto and doused in North American pop culture, Petty's family musicals have earned their place as a Toronto holiday tradition over the past 13 years.

This year, an above-average vintage penned by Chris Earle, contains all the usual ingredients.

Television stars: Paula Brancati, from Degrassi: The Next Generation, is a bland but sympathetic Cinderella, while Jake Epstein, also from Degrassi, shows off genuine comedy and guitar-playing chops as the shy Prince, who dresses like the rock star of the same name. Patty Sullivan, host of the preschool morning show Kids' CBC, transfers her non-threatening persona to Forgetful the Fairy Godmother.

Men in drag: In addition to the baritone beauty Petty, Adam Brazier and Dan Chameroy are sincerely sidesplitting as the over-the-top stepsisters Carnivia and Plumbum, who shop at "La Senza big and tall." Their Girls Just Want to Have Fun duet, dressed in eighties-inspired fluorescent green and pink monstrosities designed by evil genius Erika Connor, is a high lowlight.

The best voice belongs to Karen LeBlanc, who plays a female paparazzo following the Prince undercover as a male bodyguard; s/he falls for Eddie Glen's skeptical Buttons ("I'm as open-minded as the next stock character . . .") and woos him with rousing soul numbers.

Pop-culture references: The most ingenious incorporation involved turning the Prince's ball into an episode of So You Think You Can Prance? which featured a trio of pint-sized, scene-stealing guest judges plucked from the audience and allowed the ensemble to strut their stuff in Tracey Flye-choreographed mambo and jive numbers.

The worst topical reference - which in this topsy-turvy world is a compliment - was Petty's ridiculous joke about Michaelle Jean handing out "proroguies," every Ukrainian governor-general's favourite snack, in the lobby.

Part of the charm of this show is how cheerfully it shows no regard for how dated or overused the pop-culture ephemera it references is.

Having the characters cheer "Cinderella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh," a reference to Rihanna's 2007 hit Umbrella, is one thing, but I thought people stopped using Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back" catchphrase as a punchline before the first Gulf war started.

Petty's panto is a love-it or hate-it thing. I was hoping to get my hackles up about the shameless product placement, but in truth the fake advertisements featuring the play's characters were one of the satiric highlights of the show. And I do wonder if a certain pseudo-patriotic coffee chain's brand is really bolstered by the sight of Plumbum eating doughnut holes out of a purse that doubles as a feedbag?

The only thing I found genuinely distasteful were the constant references to the weight of the stepsisters. Granted, with a love for pizza that would rival the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (perhaps the only cultural phenomenon not to be referenced in this show), their obesity is not a metabolism issue. Still, these jokes were possibly harmful and definitely unfunny.

While the second act was perfectly paced by director Ted Dykstra, the first felt too long with too many songs. And yet, at intermission, a straw poll of little girls eating cookies in the lobby gave the show to that point an average rating of four stars. (I fear their critical faculties were compromised by the appearance of two actual, live ponies at the conclusion of act one.) My friend Gideon, who is 10 and liked the political jokes, felt the play deserved only 3 2/3stars, which he later rounded down to 3 1/2. Much as I hate to break with The Globe and Mail Christmas tradition of giving Petty's panto two stars, that seems about right. Boo! Hiss!