Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs Review
Snow White
and The Seven Dwarfs
Grand Opera House, York
13 December 2013 – 5 January 2014
Reviewed by Pamela Wright
Last night we went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs staring Emmerdale’s Adele Silva as the Wicked Queen, Any Dream Will Do’s Rob McVeigh as the Prince and Hollyoaks Marcus Patrick as the prince’s huntsman.
I took my eldest 2 daughters who are 8 and 6 years old plus one of their school friends. We parked up at 7:15 in the carpark around the corner. The carpark is really well lit and very reasonably priced – especially after 6pm – with the added bonus that the York Grand Opera House is just around the corner. We collected our tickets and were shown to the Dress Circle, we were the 3rd row from the front and had a terrific view of the stage.
This was an amazing traditional panto which myself and the girls thoroughly enjoyed, Muddles played by Aiden J Harvey was absolutely fantastic and did an amazing job of getting the audience interacting, he had us all “ooohhhhing and ahhhhhing” at the right times – he has that natural cheeky chappy stage presence that just instantly makes you feel the emotion his character was feeling.
Phil Randall was every bit the perfect panto dame with his extravagant outfits – his overly dramatic feminine stage strutting and the cheeky flirting with the young handsome Prince and his huntsman. The costumes/hairstyles throughout the show were out of this world and I looked forward to seeing which overly feminine fashion disaster he would appear in next.
Although the whole show was really lovely, the 2nd half of the show was my favourite as it had more dramatic scenes and special effects with a lot more of the “wicked queen” with more audience interaction. They managed to sneak adult humour into the story too which was that quick you could hear the delay in the audience cottoning on to it and the cast with huge grins waiting for us to catch up – there were bit of humour done using the mis-hearing, I don’t want to give any of it away so for example four candles/fork handles.
I liked the songs that were performed through the show – it was a lovely mix of traditional Christmas songs but also had a good choice of well-known pop songs that fitted into the storyline just perfectly. The dancers that took part were amazing – (there were some older dancers and some younger dancers, the younger ones got a lot of “oooohhhs and awwwwwhhhhhhhs each time they came on stage) they had some brilliant costumes too which fitted into each song that they were taking part in. My favourite dance routine was the Michael Jackson thriller type dance to the Gangnam Style tune – I won’t spoil it for you by telling you much more though.
The romance between the Prince and Snow White was believable too and when they kissed there were lots of mixed responses – mostly awhs but a few urrrrrrgggghhhh they're kissing which was funny to hear. I loved Adele Silva as the not so nice Kelly in Emmerdale so was looking forward to seeing her as the wicked queen – she played the role brilliantly and captured the whole audience with her presence – the special effects when she came on the stage each time were brilliant and the theatre was filled with huge “BOOOOOOOO’s” each time she appeared (even at the end when they all came out to take their bow and say goodbye). Her wicked laugh was absolutely fantastic too.
There was a one scene that was a Christmas snow scene, it was totally beautiful, sleigh and all and looked magical like something you would see in a snow globe. My all-time favourite part of the show has got to be without a shadow of a doubt the 12 days of Christmas routine performed by the Prince, his Huntsman, The Dwarf and Muddles – I was killing myself laughing – they put soooo much effort into it – I’m not sure that the mistakes/bits that went wrong were pre-rehearsed or ad-lib but either way it had me in knots of laughter.
I can’t finish the review without saying that Marcus Patrick was brilliant – he came on as the perfectly handsome – catalogue posing Huntsman with his tight fitting outfit – although I’m slightly biased as I was a fan of his when he was in Hollyoaks, so you I was quite excited when I got to speak to him after the show, we even got a picture taken with him and a few other cast members.
Brilliant family panto that has you sat on the edge of your seats shouting and pointing no matter what age – be warned though that it can get very noisy.
We're giving Snow White a full 5/5 – Oooohhhhh Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh yes we are I said Oooohhhhh Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh yes we are – OH YES! 😀
Rating: 5/5 
Tickets cost from £10.65 to £28.90.
For more information or to book tickets click here.
