Pantomime survives by being infinitely flexible. This version of Sleeping Beauty, with book and lyrics by Sarah A Nixon and Mark Chatterton, is a plot-driven affair worlds away from the ramshackle entertainments I saw as a child, but, mixing antique fairytale and futuristic fantasy, it still palpably works on a young audience.
The first half sticks to the original tale, with a princess threatened with death by pricking her finger on a spinning-wheel: the big difference is that her parents, a pearly king and queen, seek to avoid the curse by camping out in Epping Forest.
There are plenty of traditional panto elements. Shaun Prendergast is a robustly saucy Queen Pearl, flirting with a second-row spectator and reminding us that her greengrocer offered to show her his King Edwards. Josephine Melville is also wonderfully full-blooded as the wicked fairy, signalling her villainy by concocting potions straight out of Macbeth (“eye of newt”) and by announcing her enthusiasm for Brexit.
Things turn stranger in the second half. In an effort to thwart the malediction, the princess and her beau travel in a time capsule 100 years hence, only to find the wicked fairy has used technology to brainwash the whole world. I sensed a contradiction between the idea of a future in which we are enslaved by screens and the story’s relish for a video game like Fortnite.
But, even if the plot gets a bit baffling, Robert Hyman’s eclectic score, including a version of Uptown Funk, swings merrily along; Lily Arnold’s design evokes an Alphaville-like future; and Matthew Xia’s production gets lively performances from the cast. Rejecting Disneyesque soppiness, Ericka Posadas is a martial-arts princess who finally rejects her royal status. Anthony Rickman as her boyfriend is no sweet prince but a mutated bird. And Alice Frankham puts in a number of striking appearances as a beaky crow and a dancing queen.
This is very much a panto for the present day, in which a Perrault fairytale is cross-fertilised with Doctor Who.
• At Theatre Royal Stratford East until 12 January.
