Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are to return to the stage collectively for the first time in 17 years to play the Ugly Sisters in the London Palladium pantomime.
“It won’t be pretty,” the fashionable duo predicted in an announcement on Tuesday. “We have wished to play the Ugly Sisters for so many years, it feels this is the fulfilment of a dream – a dream our hearts made.”
The pair started performing collectively virtually 50 years in the past after assembly as college students at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. They collaborated on a vastly profitable sketch comedy sequence for the BBC and toured collectively in 1990 and 2000. Their final tour, French and Saunders: Still Alive!, was in 2008-09 and they teamed up once more for a podcast, Titting About, in 2020.
Michael Harrison, the producer of the Palladium panto, stated: “I’m absolutely delighted that Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders will be starring in this year’s Cinderella. Having two of the nation’s most beloved comedy icons together on the Palladium stage is incredibly exciting. Their legendary chemistry and razor-sharp humour will make this a truly special experience for audiences.”
Dex Lee will play Prince Charming and Hope Dawe has been forged as Cinderella. They will be part of Julian Clary, Paul Zerdin, Nigel Havers and Rob Madge, who’ve all starred in earlier pantos at the venue. The Palladium resurrected pantomime in 2016, for the first time since 1987, with Clary taking part in Dandini in a manufacturing of Cinderella that the Guardian’s Michael Billington described as a “tsunami of smut”. Catherine Tate joined the forged for its 2025 panto, Sleeping Beauty, which Harrison stated “broke all records at the London Palladium” with greater than 137,000 theatregoers attending over its run.
French appeared as Queen Dragonella in Snow White at the Palladium in 2018 and returned as Dame Trot in Jack and the Beanstalk in 2022. Saunders made her Palladium panto debut in 2023 as Captain Hook in Peter Pan.
Cinderella runs from 5 December to 10 January. Tickets go on sale on 2 April.
