Encore! Theatre Productions 
Forest Arts Centre, New Milton 
Becki Dawson 
15 December 2025
Encore! Theatre productions is a relatively new, Southbourne based group set up by Jo Mansfield in 2014, and putting on a wide variety of shows including their infamous naughty pantos.
Binder’erfella, written by Chelsea Sherry and co-directed with her husband, is Encore!’s 4th naughty panto and I must say that viewer discretion is absolutely advised! If you don’t like toilet humour, innuendos or casual swearing then this one is not for you. However, I went expecting it and definitely came away laughing!
Set a couple of years after her marriage to Prince Charming, the story follows Cinderella as she gets frustrated with her good for nothing husband and goes out with her BFF Poppers to find a job. Along the way she meets an old flame, some new friends and as always, the Fairy Nobmother. The story took a little while to kick into gear – I suspect a bit of first night nerves also crept in – but once they found the pace, it was a great storyline from start to finish.
There was a simple but effective set, making use of the large space at the Forest Arts Centre and the scene changes were relatively good, set to music. The stagehands do need to pick up things they drop, instead of relying on the cast to get rid of them – it may have been intentional, and the cast did manage this well, but it never quite fitted the storyline!
The lighting was great and did a good job, however the sound was very unbalanced. The actors had microphones, but they often were too low compared to the music backing or sometimes turned off completely – a shame as it prevented us hearing some great singing from Poppers and Cinderella especially. The song choices were excellent, but would have benefitted from a different pitch in places to help the singers out when they went out of their range – I particularly liked the song sung by Cinderella in Act 1 Scene 6 (I can’t say that word in a review, can I?) and Mother Knows Best at the beginning of Act 2 sung by Ethel.
When doing a naughty panto, it’s important that the whole cast throws themselves into it and this cast certainly did that. The audience was also brilliant and really got involved – one audience member even got a ‘lucky’ lap dance from a couple of characters (I’ll let you discover who!). All the cast members really worked well together and some excellent backup vocals from Anna Clay and Chelsea Sherry throughout really held together the bigger numbers (and their very funny interlude after Cinderella and Chad’s date – again, you’ve got to see for yourself!).
But I definitely have two standout performers. You can’t have Cinderella without Cinderella, and Jasmine Partridge did an absolutely fantastic job at keeping the pace of scenes, some great singing numbers and some even better facial expressions. But for me, this show wouldn’t have been the show it was without Cayton Francis as Poppers. He was excellently cast and performed Cinderella’s gay BFF perfectly, getting stuck into every scene and even some cucumber – a final thought to leave to the imagination!
So if you’re free on the 16th and 17th November and want some hilarious panto fun, there are limited tickets left available from Binned’erfella| Winchester.
