Cinderella review – Richmond Theatre puts its best slipper forward
★★★★⯪
SW London’s festive capital serves a panto with heart: a Prince you’d trust with your dog, Wicked Stepsisters who belong on a drag-haute-couture runway, and a Fairy Godmother who makes gym membership feel like a personal challenge.
It’s panto season, and Richmond, SW London’s festive capital, does not disappoint. Gala Night found the theatre packed, the crowd impeccably behaved — phones stayed in pockets, even at the finale. To test it properly, I brought a seven-year-old and his father, both theatre veterans who had already experienced The Slava’s Snowshow here earlier in the season. The verdict was decisive: full-on laughter, fierce booing, and that moment where you realise you’re enjoying it too much to be taking notes
You don’t come to a Christmas panto purely for narrative surprises, and it helps when a production knows exactly which version of the story it is telling. Richmond Theatre’s Cinderella keeps the bones of the fairytale firmly in place while giving its heroine a slightly more modern spine.This isn’t poor, passive Cinders waiting patiently to be rescued. She is still kind by default, still hopeful, still very easy on the eye — but she also wants a life that makes sense to her: a job she loves and someone to love — hardly a radical demand; don’t we all?
The story unfolds briskly. Cinderella (Hope Dawe) lives in Richmond with her father, Baron Basil Brush — a fox of long-standing BBC pedigree — alongside her best friend Buttons and two aggressively awful stepsisters, Hernia and Verucca Hardup. There is no stepmother, and none is missed. Hernia and Verucca, played in gloriously unfiltered drag by Jak Allen-Anderson and Stephen Guarino, announce themselves with the ritual cry of “Aren’t we gorgeous?”, inviting the audience to boo with relish. They want money, status, and a prince to “cop up with”.
Enter Prince Charming (Tom Major), blond, tall, impeccably groomed and seemingly designed in a lab to sell both Burberry coats and Disney castles — what the internet might cheekily call a “Labrador boyfriend” you can’t imagine being cruel. His singing isn’t show-stopping, but he hits all the right notes, and Major’s natural charm and poise give the story a steady centre amid the panto chaos. With him is Dandini (Michael Lin), a loyal aide, who agrees to swap places so the Prince can find someone who loves him for himself rather than the title. Lin’s energy and confident stage movement complement Major, but his dancing talents emerge more fully later in the performance.
Buttons, meanwhile, is hopelessly in love with Cinderella, who sees him only as a friend. Charlie Stemp strikes the perfect balance of warmth and self-pity, making Buttons the emotional engine of the show while expertly pressing the audience’s sentiment buttons at just the right moments. Stemp, a three-time Olivier nominee with West End and Broadway credentials, has that rare panto skill of appearing both technically brilliant and completely unshowy about it.
Visually, this is a handsome production. Richmond’s audience expects a certain standard, and it gets it. The set is generous and colourful, shifting smoothly between village, forest and palace. There are local references scattered through the design — Richmond streets and familiar pub names appear on the backdrops. At the end of Act 1, a carriage arrives complete with two real ponies, a moment that reliably produces a collective “aah” from the stalls. Scene changes glide by under Graham J McLusky’s lighting, which sets the mood and makes each transition look effortless. The Twin FX handles the special effects, including neat bursts of pyrotechnics that punctuate Fairy Godmother’s entrances.
Costumes by Teresa Nalton, assisted by Ron Briggs and James Maciver, are inventive and sometimes outlandish. The Hardup sisters wear outfits that could be loosely described as drag haute couture, perfectly matching their over-the-top characters. The dancing ensemble sports multiple original designs, including cute polar bear costumes. Helen George’s Fairy Godmother sparkles in a silver number that flashes a hint of leg, before changing into a short green outfit that complements her natural palette — naughty or nice, she’s clearly ready for Christmas parties of 2025 as well as summer 2026, and it’s hard not to be a little bit jealous. Her looks and dancing are matched by confident singing, which makes it easy to see why she was cast in the role.
The production gives a nod to Helen George’s Call the Midwife persona without overdoing it, saving the cheekiest wink for the canon when she dons gloves and a nurse’s hat. Basil Brush, celebrating 63 years in entertainment since his TV debut in 1968, plays Baron Basil with undimmed gusto. He fires off dad jokes that could have been lifted straight from a Christmas cracker, much to the delight of the children — and, for the most part, the adults too. A single nod to the viral “67” meme had the kids in stitches, while the grown-ups looked on, blinking in bemusement.
The music leans heavily on familiar pop, reworked for comic effect. There are playful takes on Bryan Adams, Adele, ABBA and the Macarena, deployed with enough pace that none of them outstay their welcome. A dance-off between Buttons and Dandini is a clear highlight, with choreography by Stephen Mear making full use of both performers’ strengths. Lin, who trained in jazz and tap and has appeared in Evita, Sunset Boulevard and The Wizard of Oz, moves with flair. But Charlie Stemp steals the show, his dancing — leaps, pirouettes, tap — precise without ever stopping the show dead to admire itself. Elsewhere, the ensemble — Lucia Coleman, Luke Jarvis, Hannah Morcos, Rowan Newsome, Emily Rose-Davis and Sienna Walker — are impressively slick, changing costumes at speed and keeping the stage busy without clutter.
The show concludes with a superb “If I Hadn’t Been…” canon, a panto tradition executed with perfectly imperfect timing. The Prince imagines life as a policeman, Buttons twirls in a pink tutu as a ballerina, Dandini wields a pancake pan as a baker, and the Fairy Godmother declares she would, naturally, have been a midwife. The routine is naughty, playful, and hilarious for both children and adults: no Christmas prizes given for guessing where the policeman’s baton ends up and if the baker hits someone with a pan.
There was even a photo booth at the theatre (a nice touch — Stranger Things is doing something similar at the Phoenix Theatre now), so alongside fond memories and strengthened abs from laughter, we took home tangible, old-fashioned souvenirs of the evening.
In Basil Brush’s own (if somewhat imaginary) words, the show is not “Boom Boom Boo” but a definite “Boom Boom Bravo.” Even if a Grinch has pinched a slice of your Christmas cheer, give Baron Basil a chance to return it.
The show runs until Sunday 4 January 2026, and it’s hard to imagine anyone leaving the theatre worse off than they arrived.
Richmond Theatre — The Green, Richmond, London, TW9 1QJ
Saturday 6 December 2025 – Sunday 4 January 2026
Tickets: ATG Tickets – Cinderella
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
