Sleeping Beauty – Review – Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
By Elizabeth Stanforth-Sharpe, December 2025
It’s that time of year. SJT is glowing at its beautiful best, the illuminated column flashing a colourful welcome, and the foyer a bedazzlement of baubles and tinsel. Children take their seats in gingerbread men pyjamas and snowmen onesies, bejewelled gold crowns on their heads, fists wrapped around twinkling sceptres. The youth group are bedecked in Christmas jumpers, sequined boas, reindeer antlers, and illuminated spectacles. The bar sofa is enlivened with festive cushions, and I’m handed my ticket in a scarlet envelope with a seasonal greeting included. Nick Lane is back with another Christmas show guaranteed to get the entire audience booing, hissing, singing along, and helping to ensure that evil is thwarted and only good magic happens.
This year’s adaptation is Sleeping Beauty, with Lane also directing for the first time. I suspect that the tale’s original 1697 writer, Charles Perrault, wouldn’t recognise much of his own version, but as he himself was adapting a much older, far more gruesome story, I think he would wholeheartedly approve of Lane’s fast-paced, bang up-to-date interpretation.
Last year’s Aladdin played heavily on Scarborough legend ‘Hairy Bob’, a contrivance that this year has cleverly transmuted into ‘Hairy Babe’. Molly is a twelve-year-old child whose mother is a fairy, and whose father is a human. She is therefore half fairy, half human – that is, a ‘Hairy’ – hence, a ‘Hairy Babe’. Brought up in the care of two fairies posing as humans in the North Yorkshire coastal town of Scarborinia, her life is normal, loud, and typical of every other tweenager in the land until she happens to mention a dream that repeatedly haunts her, alerting Auntie Clare and Uncle Harry to the fact that the wicked fairy Crepuscula has tracked her down and needs to be stopped before Molly pricks her finger and the curse of the deep sleep is put in motion. Her only princes are best friend Dan and Uncle Harry, but both are determined to leap to her rescue, braving the dangers of the Weird Lands, the Nightmare Swamps, and, most terrifying of all, an encounter with the Hippo-Faced Man, to ensure the dream spell is reversed and her future happiness is secured.
“Engaging as it is charming”
Lane’s effectiveness as a playwright for an audience of all ages lies consistently in what are known as the ‘5C’s’ of Storytelling – Character, Context, Conflict, Climax, Closure – a skill that he has honed to near perfection.
From the very beginning of the show, Molly being told that she needs to break from her play and go to bed creates an atmosphere of intimacy and recognition with every child, or once-a-child, in the auditorium, sent to bed when they didn’t want to leave the party, creating a rapport that invests in us a desire to follow the arc of who she is now to where the story will take her. Crepuscula doesn’t need to say a word for even the youngest there to understand that their alliance with her is going to be a different one, but will her pathway through the tale be transformative? The two principal opposites set in place, Lane scatters clues through the other characters as to their true identities that is as engaging as it is charming. Which one of us ever considered that the tooth fairy isn’t someone who merely rewards the loss of a milk tooth, but who is passionate in imparting the need for good dental hygiene?
Of course, no matter how well a character is written, it relies on a talented actor to bring it to life, and, yet again, SJT has put together a stellar quintet for this show. Kiara Nicole Pillai, last seen at SJT in Pride and Prejudice, plays Molly with staggering energy, and Aurore with the contained dignity that befits her royal standing.
“Crazier side”
Amy Drake, who played Nan in SJT’s 2023 Beauty And The Beast, is magnificently versatile as Auntie Claire, Clair de Lune, Amber, Fake Claire, and Fluffy Robin, but must also be heartily applauded for leading the signing and Makaton elements in the show with such elegant seamlessness. I confess I was tearful at one point, transfixed by how beautifully this is included, demonstrating that inclusivity need never be a clunky add-on, but can, and always should be, an integral part of every production. Huge jazz hands to Drake and the rest of the team at SJT for making this a priority.
Jacob Butler, who was the cover for last year’s Aladdin, and Jack in SJT’s 2021 Jack and The Beanstalk, plays Dan, the kind of best friend we all need – loyal and kind to the core, and held so affectionately by Molly’s family that her uncle nicknames him ‘Daniel Spaniel’, and Dave, the human father of Molly, but it is perhaps as one of Crepuscula’s aides, Sock, that he will probably be best remembered. There could be no-one more ill-equipped to being a henchman than Sock, and Butler is deliciously suited to his foolish incompetence.
Oliver Mawdsley, was last seen at SJT in 2023, in both Comedy of Errors (More or Less) as Dromio of Prescot /Dromio of Scarborough, and Beauty And The Beast as Beast. As Uncle Harry, Mawdsley is the kind of unassuming family man we all recognise, leaving the decisions to his wife, but relied on in a crisis, his love and care not always vocal, but blazingly apparent. As Butter, Crepuscula’s lackey, Mawdsley has opportunity to utilise a crazier side. His other roles are as a Herald, and the Hippo-faced Man.
“Curiosity and intrigue”
Annie Kirkman, a familiar face at SJT (Beauty And The Beast, Dracula, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Noises Off), is introduced to us as Isobel, a wimpy, anxious child who has a tendency to wee when she gets over-excited. To see her re-appear through the auditorium’s famous black curtains, creepily strutting down the steps as the dark hearted fairy, Crepuscula, is a moment of theatrical magic. Kirkman is a truly gifted character actor and excels in every role she plays, but that mixture of just enough scariness to up the tension for the younger members of the audience, without raising a voice level or emitting real fear is nothing less than brilliance. I pause to observe the children around me. They lean slightly into their parents, but not enough to need comforting, and their expressions are of curiosity and intrigue as to how different this character is, quickly realising their part is to boo in feigned revulsion whenever she appears. They instinctively know that it’s a storyteller’s game, just like doing all the voices in a bedtime story.
Mark ‘Tigger’ Johnson’s lighting choices are gorgeous, giving a height to the round that is reminiscent of a circus big top, enhanced by Helen Coyston’s deceptively simplistic set concept featuring three round pedestals that are re-configured to become whatever the scenes require. Coyston’s costume designs are equally measured, marking clearly the boundaries between the human world and the fairy kingdom, and employing spectacular design processes that are subtle without ever being overstated. These aren’t the gaudy sets and over the top costumes of pantomime style, but the quieter, more nuanced, nods to traditional storytelling, and all the more beautiful for that.
“Full of humour”
Stephanie Dattani’s choreography is sharp, full of humour, imagination, and quirkiness, and the combined efforts of Dylan Townley and Alex Weatherall has the audience singing, clapping, and tapping their feet to an eclectic mix of numbers that includes Queen, Madness, Diana Ross, Gayla Peeva, Slade, and Wizzard.
There is a crisis to be averted, a conflict to be negotiated, a resolution that suits all parties well, and a closing that assures us that all concerned will enjoy a Happy Christmas, full of celebration and festive joy. The cast wave their goodbyes, pyjamaed, sleepy children are carried out in dads’ arms, the youth group dance through the foyer in a flash of chattering glitter, and the older members of the audience move towards the exits humming, “Well, I wish it could be Christmas every day”, broad beams still on their faces. These are the signs of an excellent story, well told.
Sleeping Beauty runs at SJT until December 31st
