Seeing Veronica Green in Cinderella at Centenary Theatre Berkhamsted

[Ad- gifted experience] We’ve seen Cinderella previously, but when it comes to pantos, it’s always a little bit different! Cinderella at Centenary Theatre Berkhamsted featured Rupaul’s Drag Race star Veronica Green – and as fans of the show, Dann and I were pretty excited to see her on stage along with the rest of the cast. Cinderella followed the classic fairy tale story, but of course, had lots of silly panto moments, more recent songs including one from Wicked, and a lot of fantastic dance numbers.

As someone who’s seen quite a few pantos in the last year, I was very impressed with the dancing in Cinderella at Centenary Theatre Berkhamsted. The cast was huge and the bigger dance numbers were very well done. There were actually a lot of side actors that really shined; one of the taller, background characters always had the biggest facial expressions and seemed to be doing something very fun in the background; pouring drinks, gossiping, et.

Looking at the main actors, the person that played Buttons this year was actually a ventriloquist, with his own puppet that had a lot of jokes. Buttons is traditionally a bit of comic relief, and this Buttons did a fantastic job with and without his puppet. I quite enjoyed his jokes and his interaction with the audience. He made a lot of the jokes about it being a panto, other actors reading the programs, the fact that Cinderella’s picture was all over town. It was funny and didn’t take itself seriously at all.

Veronica Green played the evil stepmother, and she did a fantastic job in the role, talking to the audience who Boo’ed her, dancing and using her vocal talents to sing some impressive notes! The two evil step sisters were also fantastic, with a lot of silly Essex-feeling strangeness, like party girls. They both interacted in a very fun way with their mother and each other, one being a more intelligent sister of course.

Cinderella at Centenary Theatre Berkhamsted, according to the ending of the show, was their first professional performance; and I feel it was a grand showing. There were low-level fire works, fantastic dance numbers, lots of funny jokes, and everyone even got sprayed with water guns! I do wish they had a proper Dame – with a bunch of outrageous outfits that were not relevant to the story itself, but even without a Dame it was great. I hope to see more shows here in the future!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!