Cinderella Pantomime at the Pavilion Theatre, Worthing

This week we were invited to attend a performance of the 2015 pantomime Cinderella at the Pavilion Theatre, Worthing. The production featured a host of stars, including Dancing on Ice's Matt Evers, Strictly Come Dancing's Camilla Dallerup and Mark Read from the boy band A1.

Going to the pantomime as a family was a yearly tradition when I was little, but it's been years since I last went to one. For the last couple of years Harry has been to the pantomime with his school which is brilliant, but I've always felt that we were missing out on a family tradition a little bit, and so now that Mia is a bit older and able to sit still for long enough I was delighted that we were given the opportunity to attend as a family.

Well we all enjoyed the show very much. The singing was fantastic, the dancing and costumes spectacular (especially the Ugly Sisters of course!), and the whole production felt completely polished, even during a couple of mishaps. It was very funny, with traditional comic routines that I remember from pantomimes when I was little, along with up to date jokes.

Harry found the entire thing completely hilarious and was laughing throughout. I'm sure that a lot of the jokes must have gone over his head, but it didn't matter to him and he was still repeating them the next day and giggling to himself. He was also completely caught up in the audience participation, it's unusual for him to be joining in but I don't think he could stop himself. Mia was spellbound by the singing and the dancing, and was particularly entranced when Cinderella magically turned into a princess.

One especially good thing about this show was that there was no evil villain, the only baddies were the Ugly Stepsisters who were giving a comic rather than scary performance. This is great because Harry in particular is very sensitive to things that are a bit frightening and there was nothing here for him to worry about.

It was a good long show, and as it was an evening performance it did finish quite late, so if you have little ones I'd suggest going for a morning or matinee performance. The children are watching it again with school next week and I know that they are going to love seeing it again, I'd really recommend it!

We received complimentary tickets to the press night in exchange for this review.