Cinderella

by Paul Hanna

Directed by Paul Hanna

Friends Meeting House, Kings Heath – Thursday 20th November 2025

The story of Cinderella is one that I am sure is familiar to everyone, and there can’t be a theatre group in the country that hasn’t attempted one version or another over the years. We shall however gloss over the more grisly versions of the tale from times gone by,

This new version was written by Drama 13’s Paul Hanna who also directed (and pretty much acted as a one-man stage crew!) and is very much a stripped down version in order to accommodate the cast they have and the stage area available. Thus we have no Baron Hardup, no Buttons and the Stepmother is just an offstage voice.

Unusually for a panto, there were almost no songs, which I assume is down the venue not having a music licence. Although we did get a parody version of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” at the end.

We had a very simple staging with a slightly raised area for the bulk of the action. On stage left was a curtain which was pulled aside as and when necessary for additional locations.

For all that Paul was more or less doing all of the scene shifting himself, this was all done smoothly and effectively and ensured that gaps between scenes were as short as possible.

Drama 13 have previously taken a more unusual approach to the source material and after having the dame be Snow White last year I half expected the same character to be Cinderella this time out, but no this time Dame Dizzy was in the more traditional role as Fairy Godmother.

Matthew Gough in this role was suitably over the top in his performance and had a good rapport with the audience. He did seem to be reading most of his lines from a script, which makes me wonder if he had been called in at the last minute to replace someone else. This would also account for the lack of wigs that you normally associate with the dame role.

Bernadette O’Brien was playing the role of, how can I put this, a more mature Cinderella than we are normally used to in productions of this show, and she played it very well. Clear line delivery and good interaction with the rest of the cast and the audience when required.

As you will know, the sisters in “Cinderella” are normally played by men, but here we had a female team of Chris Reynolds and Susan Smith as Malibu and Tequila. These two were marvellously evil in their roles and worked together very well. I may have just turned down the speech impediment a tad but other than that no issues here. The ladies were clearly relishing the roles, which came over well to the audience.

Joy Rodgers as the Queen was similarly over the top and delightful in panto terms in the role of the Queen, which was in sharp contrast to a more subdued performance from Annette Gough as the King, who it must be said, did appear to have come straight from a playing card! (If pushed I’d say Hearts!) Annette also seemed to be reading several of her lines from a book that she had with her throughout.

The aforementioned Stepmother was voiced by Catherine Phillips from the wings where she was also acting as prompt. Catherine has a very powerful voice so was ideally suited to the performance role but unfortunately this also meant that the prompts when needed (and there were a couple) were very loud and noticeable.

Sarah Weir played the Prince and seemed to have difficulty standing still, flitting around at every opportunity. The cast was rounded off with Steve Knowles as the Amazon Delivery Man who appeared at regular intervals with his “enormous package” and a hat that appeared to have been borrowed from one of the village people. A nice comic cameo performance here. Steve was also listed in the programme as set designer, and this aspect certainly worked very well.

If I had one issue with this show it is probably one of pacing, especially in the second half, which clocked in at over an hour. With a show of this nature, I’d suggest that the first act should be the longer of the two, as there was a clear feeling in the audience of how long it had been going on for.

I know first night audiences can be a bit hard to get warmed up at the best of times, but this didn’t help, especially as the first act had flown by with the right amount of pace. Keep the gags coming, keep the actors moving around, keep doing things which demand the audience’s attention.

That said, for the most part they were clapping and otherwise interacting in the right places.

Overall, not a bad show by any stretch of the imagination and one that was very much appreciated by a full auditorium. We had a good script with some interesting variations from a more traditional version, which were certainly worth exploring. Maybe a couple more weeks of rehearsal would have been beneficial (often easier said than done I know!) in order to really enhance the experience.

Reviewed by David G