The Rock 'n' Roll Panto Rapunzel review

The action in Goodridge’s frenetically paced production is set against Janet Bird’s Barbie Dreamhouse-like pastel and Day-Glo set. Bird’s cartoonish costumes also give the production the air of a comic book brought anarchically to life. The production seemingly takes its cue from the Barbie movie, too, in the way it presents its male characters, who range from endearingly ineffectual – Ben Boskovic’s amusingly foppish, floppy-haired Prince Timotei and Tomi Ogbaro’s likably hapless salon worker Trevor – to a comically exaggerated form of toxic masculinity – villainous Mancunian barber Danny Ruff, played hilariously by Zoe West. Ruff is a monstrous caricature of male machismo (he’s pleased that “a king is back on the stamps”) and could be a bit too on the nose if it weren’t for West’s comic gusto.
 
Ruff – we learn in one of many flashbacks – duped his former colleague Debbie Updo (lugubriously underplayed by Brookside alumnus Michael Starke) into giving away her daughter, Rapunzel (an underused Ai Kumar), and locked her in a tower after discovering that her hair has magical properties.
 
The plot takes a while to get going and gets slightly convoluted in the less focused second half. But Christian includes some witty and well observed lines among the hair puns and groan-worthy wordplay. And some off-the-wall moments – among them the appearance of Emma Bispham’s outlandishly hirsute, Cousin Itt-like Hairy McFairy – and the infectious enthusiasm of the cast is enough to distract from any narrative weaknesses.