It’s that time of the year again. The presents have been distributed, the turkeys have been carved and we’re welcoming a brand new year. Of course, that means it’s also panto season and, just like clockwork, the local stages are replete with dames, baddies and fairy godmothers.

This year’s offering by the MADC, staged at the spacious MFCC in Ta’ Qali, sees the island’s longest-running panto veer back towards more traditional routes.

In recent years, the pantos hosted by the MADC have taken a turn away from the show’s roots, with some unusual story choices such as The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins and last year’s somewhat disastrous Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Since the new crop of MADC’s panto plot lines were somewhat hit-and-miss, I was personally excited to see them return to a typical fairytale with this year’s Cinderella.

While I would count myself as a fervent fan of this holiday tradition, I’m afraid that the MADC may have gone a little too far in going back to basics with this year’s production. Perhaps in a reaction to the unorthodox choices of the last few years, writer Marylu Coppini and director Chris Gatt seem to have gone out of their way to write a very by-the-book show, with unfortunately mixed effects.

Featuring stunning sets designed by Romualdo Moretti, a top-notch cast of panto players, and the musical stylings of the irreplaceable maestro Paul Abela and his gang, Cinderella was off to a strong start. Unfortunately, however, I feel that the show was thoroughly let down by its script, which thoroughly failed to hold my attention throughout.

Featuring stunning sets designed by Romualdo Moretti, a top-notch cast of panto players and the musical stylings of the irreplaceable maestro Paul Abela

Although many individual factors of the show were strong, they simply failed to come together with Cinderella. The principal boy and girl were well cast, with Sandie von Brockdorff and Rachael Tedesco Triccas proving to be sweet and well-suited to their roles, but their fairytale meeting in the woods is ground to a steady halt by dull dialogue and an astonishingly poor choice of song. This is a theme which carries on throughout the show. I don’t dislike the use of older songs in general but, with the average age of Cinderella’s music settling in at 35 years old, it’s no wonder they felt a little stale.

There’s definitely room for classics like Thriller and Footloose in a great panto, but including more than one song released in the 21st century wouldn’t have hurt either. The show’s chorus members, given little enough to do by the script, seemed somewhat bored during a number of their appearances. When faced with an opening song that’s probably older than half their nannas (1930s I Got Rhythm), I can hardly blame them.

A show can recover from a slow opening. However, while I liked the cast in general, the show seemed to lack ‘oomph’ throughout. James Ryder’s performance as Buttons is genuinely enthusiastic and just a touch magical, and Francesco Joseph Nicodeme is a delight as flamboyant footman Dandini. Renato Dimech is given little to do as Cinderella’s put-upon papà, Baron Flooseless, while Francesca Briffa’s flighty Fairy Godmother conveniently turns up to magic our heroine’s way out of trouble. Any veteran panto-goers probably know that no one plays a cackling baddie quite like Isabel Warrington, so I wish that the script had allowed her Baroness Kifuza to be a little more dark and dastardly to really earn those hearty boos from the audience.

I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s double dames, the ugly stepsisters Dulcey and Duda, played by Michael Mangion and Jean Pierre Busuttil respectively. My only qualm here is that I wish they’d had a little more to do and were a little more involved in the plot. A lot of their interaction seemed to be with Rambert Attard and Jeremy Grech’s Melħa and Bżaru, who (while fun) added nothing to the plot of the show and felt very extra.

Cinderella, unfortunately needed a good trim, a bit of reshaping, and an extra helping of jokes added to it – preferably from this millennium. Without it, the plot plodded along and time was wasted with certain scenes that added little to either the story or the audience’s enjoyment. For example, I understand that slapstick is a traditional element of a pantomime, but by the third chase sequence, it all felt rather tired.

I’d like to see more of the return to traditional panto settings from MADC, as well as more stunning visuals like Cinderella’s beautiful carriage ride across the stage. There was great potential in Cinderella as a concept and you could see it shining through in some key moments – however, that potential is never quite reached. With an amazing venue to use as a blank canvas, a marriage of the traditional and some creative originality is the sweet spot that the MADC has been looking for.

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