The astonishing talents of Louie Spence find the ideal vehicle for their exposure in Milton Keynes’s hugely entertaining production of Cinderella.

Spence, who has built a career out of camp, was a performer previously unknown to your non-telly-watching reviewer. Making his acquaintance, however, proved a far from dismaying experience, for his over-the-top antics can hardly fail to tickle one’s fancy.

The niftiest of movers with the lispiest of voices, Louie would be ideal, you might think, as the Fairy Godmother (a joke that the self-mocking star would surely be the first to crack).

Instead, chanteuse Deniece Pearson shines in this glittering role — just hear her belt out The Communards’ hit Don’t Leave Me This Way — while Louie explodes on to the stage as Dandini.

Dominique DeHavilland Dandini, to give him his full name, is the manservant and romantic ‘Mr Fixit’ to an understandably somewhat nervous Prince Charming (Andrew Derbyshire).

Kev Orkian’s Buttons treads warily, too, when he is forced into a close working partnership with him over catering for the palace ball. Kev is a fancy mover as well, as he shows, both at the piano keyboard and in a well-managed impersonation of his flamboyant co-star. John Barr, who played Widow Twankey in last year’s MK Aladdin, struts out in fancy finery again as Pixie, the smaller, but not a degree sweeter, of the ugly sisters. Neither she nor Peaches (Paul Burnham) is ever going to look a patch on the winsome Cinders (Anna Williamson), despite the attentions lavished on themselves from the dwindling finances of their stepfather Baron Hardup (Tim Hudson).

FOUR STARS

 

Until January 6
Box office: 0844 871 7652 (www.atgtickets.
com/miltonkeynes)