Life may be imitating art with Eight-freestyle’s Cinderella at Contact. Rather than wish her prince would come, the central character aspires to be a dancer. One wonders if Sean Canning, who directed and co-wrote the show with Red Redmond, might have ambitions to stage a conventional jukebox musical instead of a pantomime.
Although the plot of the pantomime follows the traditional storyline, there are contemporary aspects. Rebecca Crookson’s Cinderella shows environmental awareness, fretting over the wasteful lifestyle of her stepsisters and upcycling their discarded clothing into new glad rags. Cinderella prefers a career to a husband—wishing to be a disco-dancing queen rather than a monarch. Prince Charming finds a combination of being harassed by the paparazzi and his tiresome royal duties are driving him, well, spare and considers abdicating to California. Financial desperation compels Cinderella’s father to sign up for a payday loan despite the audience vocally discouraging such a rash act.
In pantomime, sometimes the musical interludes are used to allow time for costume or scene changes. However, in this version of Cinderella, the reverse may be the case—the panto aspects allow time for the dance and musical numbers to be set up. As with most pantos, recent pop hits with which the young audience are likely to be familiar are employed. But there are far more than is usual and almost all are accompanied by an elaborate dance routine.
Choreographer Michella Louise produces dance routines ranging from bopping rock ’n’ roll to line dancing. A five-person ensemble is impressively capable of tackling such a diverse programme with high kicks, lifts, splits and even somersaults. The ensemble is supplemented by two groups of 20 young dancers who come close to stealing the show with their achingly cute interpretation of "I Like to Move It".
With a live four-piece band and decent vocalists such as Ella-Maria Danson (who also plays Dandini), the musical numbers are the high point of the panto. But there are a lot of them, and the songs are played in full rather than in a medley. As a result, other aspects of the show may have been trimmed, and it still runs for two and a half hours.
The character of the wicked stepmother is omitted. Other than the ‘he’s behind you’ ghost routine and the reading out of birthdays, few of the scenes one might expect in a panto are included. Audience interaction is limited, there is no sing-along to the bouncing ball and no-one is invited onstage. The call-and-response routines between cast and audience are present and correct, but the lengthy gaps due to the musical numbers causes a loss of momentum.
Lady Bushra and Misty Chance, from Manchester’s LGBTQ+ and drag scene, play Cinderella’s stepsisters but, whether due to time limitations or an awareness of the tender years of the target audience, apart from the occasional mention of Canal Street, bring little of their background acts to the panto.
The jokes, as one would expect, are of Christmas cracker standard but oddly lacking context, so come across as funny peculiar as much as funny ha-ha. "Someone here is an owl." "Who?" "I knew it was you." The pacing is pedestrian, so the first act runs 75 minutes, which puts a strain on the attention span of the young audience, particularly those in the row behind me who were kicking anything in range, including me.
Whilst a quality production, Eight-freestyle’s Cinderella is as much jukebox musical as pantomime.