Fairy Tale Delight

The Twelve Dancing Princesses, performed by the Priory Youth Theatre, The Priory, Kenilworth.

Review by Anne Cee

The Priory Youth Theatre had a lovely time last night bringing this well known fairy tale to the stage. Fabulous matching braids and cute, colourful slippers were the order of the day for most of the cast as the Brother’s Grimm story of the worried king locking his 12 daughters up each night was re-told with gentle humour and dashes of cheekiness.

The show opened confidently with a lovely solo rendition of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', quickly followed by a fun 'We Are Fam-i-ly' as the 12 princesses primped, preened and pouted in an imaginary mirror. The King postured authoritatively in front of his very large family of little women before beginning to make friends with the delightfully charming Michael – at once a generous gardener and a prospective beau for one of the princesses.

The show rattled along with lovely pace, and the regular references to headless corpses never lowered the evening’s mood. The mystery of how the princesses managed to wear out their shoes every night kept the audience guessing and Director Nicky Jessop created some lovely scenes such as the pillow fight which worked really well whilst being much kinder than many real life sisterly bedtime squabbles.

Lots of story telling opportunities for all the cast and well timed slots for individuals to do a song of their own resulted in a lovely, gentle, sweet show.

Show ends 12 October. Tickets available from Priory Theatre and TicketSource: https://www.priorytheatre.co.uk/whatson/twelve-dancing-princesses