Review: SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, New Victoria Theatre Woking
Photo credit: Ian Olsson
We first saw Rob Rinder and Lesley Joseph in Snow White in 2021 at the Bristol Hippodrome and enjoyed the show immensely. Last year, they played the title together at Theatre Royal Plymouth and this year, they bring the production to New Victoria Woking.
Just like Cinderella, thirty minutes up the M3 in Richmond, they are determined to squeeze the business, music and storytelling into a less than two-hour window and despite a ten-minute delay to the 7pm start, and a twenty-five-minute interval, the show is over by just after nine. Yet unlike the Richmond show, it feels long enough. Pantomime should keep the balance between the storytelling and ensure that the music and flows from the narrative. Sadly, here it does not and it feels an odd collection of routines only loosely joined by the plot.
Rob Rinder as the Man in the Mirror (although there is no sign of a mirror in this production) starts with a cartwheel and spins, pirouettes and struts on every entrance, revelling in the character, and enjoys a string of legal puns around his legal background. Lesley Joseph, as she did in Bristol, has a running gag about not being called Lesley on stage and lusts after the male ensemble members at every opportunity. Both are capable of more if given better material. The standard routines of the tongue twister “two poisonous pythons” and “12 Days of Christmas” are executed with plenty of rehearsed slips up, mistakes and fake corpses that generate plenty of laughs from the audience.
The love story of Snow White (Brianna Craig) and William (Scott Maurice) follows the standard storyline until the Queen offers them the poison apple, which he chooses to eat for no obvious reason, and is revived by a “true love kiss” from Snow White (although we did not see his consent in advance to being kissed). The seven dwarfs look the part although, as always, we miss the Disney songs and names, and their stage time is very limited.
The energy and comedy is delivered by Aaron James as Muddles and he adds a little more innuendo to the Mastermind routine and causes chaos as Rinder tries to sing “The Wonder of You”, although neither fits into the story, nor do the dancing polar bears or the flying half motorbike that Rinder flies at the end of Act 1. Indeed, the best moments of the show are provided by the three young children who join Muddles for the song sheet of ‘Two Smart Fellas’ proving that fart jokes (which Muddles had run throughout the show) are an easy laugh. When a child says she is eight, it gives a perfect opportunity to reference the 6-7 meme, which gets a strong reaction from the young in the audience . The songsheet with children between three and ten is an essential element of pantomime and with the right comic handling, the interviews creates fresh spontaneous amusing moments that provide lasting memories, not just for those kids involved and their families, but for all of us in the audience. James does very well even when one child does not even know his own name but does not cut it short and coaxes the kids into singing the tongue twister. The three kids led by the delightful Willow are the stars of the show,
The New Victoria Theatre seats over 1000 and we might have expected better sets (mainly creased cloths), more special effects (the floating apple is effective), better storytelling, and more innovation in the comic business. That’s not to say the production does not work for the audience but it is disappointing that four years on from seeing this production for the first time, they have not built on the core relationships and business and with Stalls seats priced at over £50 each, we think we are entitled to expect more.
** Two stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne