Cinderella – flying to the ball in a horse-drawn carriage (Grand Opera House until Sunday 15 January)

The opening minutes of this year’s pantomime see the fairy godmother (May McFettridge) make a daring entrance onto the Grand Opera House stage, establish the fine singing voices of Prince Charming and his buddy/servant Dandini (Conor Headley and Lisburn’s Gyasi Sheppy), and hear from Cinderella (Kia-Paris Walcott) about living the Belfast dream, before her stepsisters (Jo Donnelly and Jolene O’Hara) appear carrying giant Primark bags, we meet Cinderella’s father Baron Hardup (Paddy Jenkins) who’s been experiencing a cost of living crisis for quite some time, and Buttons (Adam C Booth playing a cross between Elvis the Pelvis and Cliff Richard) inducts the audience into his gang.

Before long, polar bears will dance, a coach and magic horses will fly Cinderella to a ball, Buttons will be friend-zoned (again), and there will be a big sparkling wedding full of glitz and glamour ... and that’s only May McFettridge’s wedding outfit!

High points are the strong singing voices that extend across the cast, the broad Belfast accents and bad ass attitudes of the stepsisters who also channel their inner Shirley Bassey, a slapstick Meat Loaf routine, and the lyrical reworking of several ABBA songs (as if three weeks of Mamma Mia performances were still reverberating around the Grand Opera House).

Low points include the moment that giving someone a wedgie was added to the pantomime lexicon, and two characters saying that “I’ve just came [sic] from the palace” much to the annoyance of parents and teachers across the audience.

The exuberant Sheppy is underused, particularly in the first act. Meanwhile, Walcott gets much more opportunity to shine centre-stage this year: a sizeable number of cast and creatives from last year’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears are back, which must be seen as testament to the good atmosphere backstage in the Belfast production.

The costumes are colourful, the live band adapt to the wanton (and crowd-pleasing) messing around and ad libbing during the comedy routines – the cast are only five performances into their 69-show run – and there are regular pyrotechnics and big set changes to keep building the spectacle.

Crossroads Pantomimes’ Cinderella plays at the Grand Opera House until Sunday 15 January. It’s definitely the most elaborate pantomime in town with large scale special effects, an eight-strong dance ensemble, five band members in the pit, and laughs galore.

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The Shop at the Top of the Town – nostalgic evening of festive comedy (Theatre at the Mill until Saturday 31 December)

The Theatre at the Mill’s production of The Shop at the Top of the Town takes audiences back to the Belfast of the early 1970s. The security barriers have created a ring of steel around the city’s retail centre. Michael Cameron has dreamt up a romantic comedy, a less smutty version of Are You Being Served, following the lives of the staff in Hoffman’s department store in the final throws of the pre-Christmas rush. Trading under the motto “if it’s possible to buy we’ll sell it”, the shop’s love department is doing brisk business with plenty of duds being returned and new partnerships being considered.

We meet the store’s owner, Felix Hoffman (Sean Kearns), a German Jew who came to Belfast to escape the bombs and barriers. He’s an outsider, with a firm but (mostly) fair attitude to his staff. His glamorous and sultry wife (Mary Moulds) spends her husband’s money in order to find alternative pleasure, right under his nose.

Out on the shop floor, tall and reliable Mr Kennedy (Rory McCollum) is seen as management material, but he longs to find someone with whom he can share his life outside working hours. Mr Fenner (David Marken) is a cad and a bounder, with ambitions well above his tawdry station. Flora (Libby Smyth) – it’s a time when older women on the shop floor were referred to by their first names! – revisits painful memories every Christmas. Then there’s the mayhem-inducing drunken Santa (Marty Maguire), sacked last year from the grotto in the Co-Op. Into this mix steps young Miss Newman (Rosie Barry), who can talk her way into employment and out of trouble, but perhaps not into a meaningful relationship.

Death, loneliness, depression, unfaithfulness and redundancy are dark themes. Yet there’s a merciful lightness to the performances, much aided by Sarah Jane Johnston’s extensive choreography and Colm G Doran’s brisk direction that won’t allow any scene to tarry.

It’s 28 years since Anderson and McAuley shut its doors for the last time, so anyone under the age of 40 will miss a lot of the references to ‘old’ Belfast, the retail giants of yesteryear, and the effect of the Troubles on everyday life. But they’ll still be rewarded with great banter between the shop staff, fun moments of physical theatre, a festive music box with a novel tune, a smattering of fine innuendo, and Garth McConaghie’s jazzy big band soundtrack and songs that unpack the emotion and the internal baggage. The score’s repeated ascending motif neatly echoes the store’s grand rising staircase, while the first act duet Somehow I’m Stuck With You really captures the spark between Mr Kennedy and Miss Newman even though they don’t see eye to eye on so many levels.

Ciarán Bagnall’s two-level set oozes big department store quality with wooden panelling and solid fixtures and fittings, while the cut of Rosie McClelland’s costumes adds style to the brown and beige plaid uniforms worn by the Hoffman staff. The biggest glitterball in the north spins, and the audience are transported back to enjoy a nostalgic evening of festive comedy brought to life by a cast who are on top form.

The Shop at the Top of the Town continues at the Theatre at the Mill until Saturday 31 December.

Photo credit: Stephen Davison and Ciarán Bagnall

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Cinderella – subtly changed times in this arresting evolution of the familiar tale (Cahoots at The MAC until Sunday 8 January)

Welcome to Cinderella, Cahoots-style. Everything is roughly as you’d expect. Or is it?

A once-rich woman and her two belligerent daughters come to live with a hard-working widower clockmaker and his only daughter. A posh ball invites aspirations of marriage and wealth from the upper classes. Young hearts are pulled in all directions. A clock strikes twelve. A fairy godmother can see a bigger picture unfolding. Much the Cahoots’ production of Cinderella at The MAC seems familiar.

Yet there’s also a monarch who is confined to bed following a death in the family. A flamboyant composer Wolfgang living in the King’s castle. A young lad calls in a girl’s garden until his father bans him from further contact with the unsuitable commoners. More than one shoe is left behind. And integrated into the storytelling, there are moments that make children and adults alike exclaim “ooooooh” and “where’d that come from” as the set reveals its secrets and characters appear from nowhere.

Score Draw Music’s songs and soundscape borrow from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, brilliantly riffing off Eine kleine Nachtmusik at every opportunity. It’s a masterly move, as the well-known melodies provide energetic foundations for the show’s new lyrics. Then out of the blue, the stage turns full La La Land with a new theme and choreography. While defying logic, it’s undeniably a lovely mix of old and new!

Diana Ennis’ set is a solid stone arch bridge with steps up each side. The space underneath is full of surprising reveals and subtle multi-layered video effects that can sandwich the real-life performers. You can see the progression of the effects from Cahoots’ experimentation during two years of Halloween shows at City Side Retail Park.

Ennis also pulls off big statement looks clothing Cinderella’s two stepsisters in stylish fluffy and puffy dresses. Their mother is kitted out in fortune teller chic. The fairy godmother looks like her outfit has been pulled through a hedge backwards. It’s a visual treat, and that’s before the quick changes and an on-stage transformation (that I missed as I was still gawking at the spark machines on top of the bridge … a misdirection that perhaps lasts a shade too long).

Big brash beams of light paint the air above the action. A starry backdrop stretches higher up than normal above the lighting trusses to make the pretty substantial set look smaller in scale to generate the audible “wow” from the audience. Meanwhile, Cahoots also explores the wonder of miniature with scaled down props like a fist-sized talking puppet bird, little houses with smoking chimneys, and an amazing origami-like orchestra.

The main characters are given a heavier sprinkling of complexity than is normal in a Christmas show. Every adult is dealing with grief and loss: it affects their decision making and skews each one’s moral compass. The step-sisters – played with a snarling vigour and arrestingly uncouth mouths by Cahoots alumni Phillipa O’Hara and Catriona McFeely – are as likely to fight with each other as Cinderella. Their duets and harmonies soar majestically above the ensemble.

Conor Quinn first appears as a local lad, whose heritage is later revealed. It's a character who is trying to balance duty, obedience and finding independence to follow his heart. All the while, Quinn’s voice is sublime in his solos and duets with Corrie Earley’s pleasing Cinderella. Allison Harding weaves her maternal character from vulnerable to controlling, knocking over anyone who gets in the way. Edalia Day’s Wolfgang is a voice of reason, and she steals every scene with a vibrant presence and a rich voice (and not just due to her purple glittery attire and well-developed sense of melodrama).

Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney’s production of Cinderella emphasises that “times change”. Women aren’t just there to be chosen by men. Class divides aren’t permanent. As the king suggests, a revolution is coming. Roles are less tied to specific genders. Children may be a product of their parents, but they also have the freewill to choose to blossom and break free from unhealthy patterns of behaviour.

Musically strong, Charles Way’s story is fresh for adults, mostly familiar for children, and full of astonishing effects that make The MAC and Cahoots’ Cinderella a top notch Christmas show. Performances continue until Sunday 8 January.

Photo credit: Melissa Gordon

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