Sleeping Beauty

Rowntree Players are back at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre this December with Sleeping Beauty, a brand-new panto they've written themselves. It's not a straight retelling of the fairy tale, though. They've set it in the kingdom of Stilton-on-the-Mould, where a royal baby is cursed and sharp things are strictly forbidden. The story follows Magnolia Manglethorpe, a psychic seer and spectacularly unreliable guardian, and her son Ivor, who has to break the curse of Marigold Malificent. They describe it as a panto packed with magic, mayhem, romance and a trifle-related catastrophe.

There's a bit of local history behind the company, too. Rowntree Players is the oldest amateur theatre company in York and one of the oldest in the country. They were founded in 1912 as the Cocoa Works Dramatic Society by workers at the Rowntrees Chocolate Factory, and they first performed in the factory's Lecture Hall before later taking up residence at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre. This is their take on a Christmas classic, written from scratch rather than pulled from a script book.

On the accessibility side, the production includes audio description for audiences with sight loss, live captioning and British Sign Language interpretation. Tickets are £20 to £24, with a group rate of £16 per ticket for groups of ten or more on Tuesday to Thursday evenings.

There are plenty of dates to choose from across two weekends. It opens on Saturday 5 December with matinee at 2:00pm and evening at 7:30pm, then Sunday 6 December at 2:00pm and 6:00pm. It returns for a run of evening shows at 7:30pm from Tuesday 8 through Friday 11 December, and finishes on Saturday 12 December with a 2:00pm matinee and a 7:30pm evening performance.