It’s Betty Drooper’s 16th birthday party and everyone who’s anyone will be there - her faithful companion Hamish the Hamster, her beautiful fairy godmother Flambonia Plunge and of course the pantosphere’s equivalent of Harry Styles, Handsome Dan, the Fanciest Dancer in All the Land. But Fairly Evil the Evil Fairy hasn’t received an invite. And she is pure ragin’! Rumour has it she’s concocted a spell to put Betty to sleep for a hundred years (I mean, we all like a lie in but that’s taking it too far!). Read more …
Will Betty foil Fairly Evil’s dastardly plan? Will she be dancin’ when Handsome Dan comes askin’? And just who is that mysterious Ogre lurking about at the back of the party purvey?
It’s all happening down at the Tron this Christmas, so get yourself a ticket to Betty Drooper’s party if it’s the last thing you do.
This year’s panto at the Tron is accompanied by long, low sucking sound; and I fear it’s the sound of the great age of the Scottish meta-panto disappearing up its own boomps-a-daisy, never to be seen again.
The show's heart – if not its brain – is always in the right place.
It would be terrific for this wonderfully talented cast to have a far better script to shine with. As it is, Sleeping Betty is a near miss of a train wreck that is valiantly saved by a very able and game cast. It’s occasionally fun, but it should be much better than that.
If it lacks the comedic spark to propel it into the highest reaches of panto hilarity, it is nonetheless a merry, good-humoured show directed with pace and zest by Kenny Miller.
Such weaknesses in the writing are assuaged by the energies of the cast.
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Friday November 27, 2015, until Sunday January 3, 2016. More info: www.tron.co.uk