As a student, it’s fascinating to watch what the other side makes of you in the town/gown divide. When Wicked Stepsisters Tess (Steven Roberts) and Claudia (Harry Howle) quipped that the ADC has “gone woke and gone broke” in this year’s CAT pantomime, I cackled out loud – not least because ADC management were also in the audience that night. I hope they had a good laugh too – lord knows, that multiple-grand-a-year deficit wasn’t going to poke fun at itself.

This was a joke that worked because it was somewhat true. Others - like the pot-shots at the Cambridge high street – landed with uneven footing because they didn’t really speak to anything. I still don’t understand the quips about Heffers, the Corn Exchange or dining-and-dashing at Pizza Express. Maybe these speak to something in the townie experience that I just couldn’t connect with. Or – as I suspect is more likely – Al Lockhart-Morley’s script was just plain lazy, rattling off a list of cultural touchstones without yielding any funny or truthful observations therein.

“I fear that to unpick the narrative logic is to put more thought into the story than the writer has”

In fact, I fear that to unpick the narrative logic of this year’s Cinderella is to put more thought into the story than the writer has. The plot, complete with a Cambridge setting, can’t decide whether our heroine (Chloe Gentles) is a top student at ‘Hardcup College’, owned by her father Baron Hardup (Stuart Simons), or a serving girl pushed around by Roberts and Howle’s (utterly hilarious) Tess and Claudia. At the outset, Cinderella is awaiting the long-due return of her father from his honeymoon, which is where the chronology becomes equally confusing. The Stepsisters have only just arrived in Cinderella’s life, so their abusive dynamic lacks its proper punch and their dastardly antics, limited to ripping up her dress and stuffing her in a cellar door, are without much heft. It’s difficult to invest much pity in our protagonist when she ends up ripping her own invitation to the ball – after a mere few seconds of peer pressure. Come on girl!

Poor Fairy Goodheart (Julia J. Nagle). Her role in this panto is a little defunct when it appears that for the most part Cinderella is doing fine, actually – she’s front and centre of some brilliantly choreographed numbers, is beloved by everyone in town and has an offer to study ‘animal sciences’(?) at Harvard. Only, her ‘best friend’ Buttons (Matt Crosby) is keeping the news secret from her because … he doesn’t want Cinderella to leave Cambridge? Surely this qualifies him as the panto’s antagonist. Credit where it’s due though – panto legend Crosby is able to keep the audience in the palm of his hands in his solo scenes.

“To think: all that mind-blowing technical and creative legwork, animating a brain-dead script”

There aren’t plot ‘holes’ so much as great big chasms in the fabric of the storytelling that develop, like sinkholes, and come to swallow the production whole. Cinderella trots into the woods one day and falls alarmingly quickly in love with Prince Charming (Jack Wilcox), unconvincingly incognito as his footman Dandini (Alex Bloomer), with whom he has swapped identities in yet another plotline that goes absolutely nowhere. At first, confusingly, Cinderella alternates between being attracted to Prince Charming and wanting to have a go at him about the environment – until the latter storyline evaporates completely in act two. Oh, and there’s a brief, inexplicable hurdle about the Prince falling for Cinderella because she’s not royalty – though she is the daughter of a baron who, like the Prince, also owns a college…?

In short, you need to divest from the plot completely to have a good time – though there comes a point where that’s a bit like chucking the baby out with the bath water. It’s a shame because technically speaking, the pantomime is seamless. The LED panels circumscribing the stage are mesmerisingly gorgeous, and never once clash with the olden-day setting of the story. Ian Westbrook’s set design is phenomenal, peeling away each scene at a time to reveal a new coral-coloured backdrop of Cambridge – from a college cloister court to a mosaical impression of Market Square – all projecting three-dimensionality while remaining just as 2D as the characters. The singing and performances are a treat, and the technical brilliance reaches its apex with the unveiling of Cinderella’s carriage in an utterly magical closing sequence to the first act.

That the show drew consistent, enthusiastic applause – even during the awry slosh scene, which, like the Stepsisters, ended up falling on its face, tits-up – is probably due to the audience packing out the theatre, and being heavily sedated by the non-stop flow of free drinks. For me, though, the jig was up when, several wines in, I still couldn’t bite into the logic of the plot. To think: all that mind-blowing technical and creative legwork, animating a brain-dead script. Alas, it’s the tragedy of too many cash-grabbing pantos. Like Cinderella, it’s a tale as old as time.

‘Cinderella’ is showing at the Cambridge Arts Theatre from Thursday 28th November 2024 until Sunday 5th January 2025, at various times including matinees.