4.5

	Gilded Balloon Teviot (venue website) Comedy 4 - 30 Aug (not 18), 5:30pm (6:25pm) Reviewed by Mathilda Gregory

As someone who has recently written defences of Twilight and Disney's Little Mermaid - both of which are soundly ridiculed in this show - I could have hated every minute of Princess Cabaret. I was expecting the usual swipes at the Disney Princess line, because, well, they're easy targets, aren't they?

But Princess Cabaret is altogether cleverer and more subtle than that.  Each princess is cleverly characterised, not just critiqued for being man-mad.  Each Princess is an individual with her own story.  All of them fall in love with their princes, but the intricacies of each relationship are extrapolated and all kinds of clever fun are found.

Aurora has been asleep for a long time and finds the modern world difficult to cope with - especially the end of slavery.  Belle is distraught when the Beast turns back into a man (who wouldn't be?).  Meanwhile Jasmine is struggling to balance her relationship with Aladdin and her day job managing volatile Middle Eastern politics, and there remains something a bit fishy about Ariel.

The whole show is nicely MC'd by a stroppy piano-playing Tinkerbell - who doesn't get to play properly with the Princesses, because she has wings.  The show features excellent singing and harmonies from all the performers, great comic timing and hilariously spot-on shabby-princess-chic costumes.  I particularly loved the princes' turn centre stage with the song parody Bringing Sexist Back ("I'll shag yer sister if you misbehave").

And it ends with all the Princess finding true love in the most perfect way possible.  The show's only proper parody of a Disney song makes certain that you'll never think of a magic carpet quite the same way again.