Sleeping Beauties to enchant audiences

Robert Alan Evans’ adaptation breaks from fairy tale tradition with two sleeping beauties

A new adaptation of Sleeping Beauty will be this year’s Christmas production at the Sherman Theatre.

The play runs from the sixth of December to the fourth of January, with 14 performances scheduled to take place.

While based on a traditional story, director Robert Alan Evans has brought a modern twist to the fairy tale. His adaptation centers around two best friends, who fall asleep for a thousand years, waking up in a dramatically different world.

Friendship is the central theme of Evans’ re-imagining, with the director explaining, “What was interesting about writing The Sleeping Beauties was getting to write about two best friends.”

Evans’s reinvention of a classic tale is set to entertain young and old alike, providing an interesting alternative to traditional Christmas pantomime.

Homecoming

The Sleeping Beauties has been a long time in the making. “It was a year ago that I started talking to the Sherman about doing a new version of Sleeping Beauty and I started writing it back in January”, explains Robert Alan Evans.

This lengthy writing process meant that while the rest of us were enjoying the summer, Robert’s mind was on the winter. “By August the script’s usually been through 4 rewrites and you often find yourself thinking about snow, ice and elves when everyone else is going on their summer holidays”, the director reflects.

The play also offered Robert a chance to return to his childhood home of Penarth. He believes that this, and the memories it conjured up, have inspired the writing process. “I remember hanging about Alexandra Park all the time”, he smiles, “going to the pier at night and down underneath to where the concrete legs meet the water in the dark.

“I suppose it is these things you use when you’re writing a show, if not the actual events of the past then the memory of it, the feeling.”