Merry Christmas from Pantoland!

I hope you've all had a great festive season, and here's to a happy & healthy New Year!

If you haven't already been to see us, there's still time... we're here until the 15th January...don't miss out :-)

3 weeks down - 4 to to!

Where has the time gone? It's hard to believe that - with last night's performance - we have been open for 3 weeks. Eeek! So by the end of Wednesday's shows next week we'll be half way through our time here, following Dick & Tommy on their adventures to London and beyond.

We've been very lucky with our reviews (is lucky the right word?...) which have been really great. The links to some are just below here, but this is what some of them have been saying:

"The Theatre Royal has put on some fantastic pantomimes over the years and this year’s production ... delivered on all fronts."

"Dick Whittington proves to be a deliciously devilish start to the festive season..."

"With an opera singing diva dame and tap dancing rats spoofing The Sound of Music what’s not to like?"

"... this charming rib-tickler of a production..."

"The lasting feeling is one of great warmth and joy, largely down to the uniformly excellent cast..."

".... the wonderfully warm, intimate and magical pantomime that is Dick Whittington."

Review in The Stage is here. | Review in the East Anglian Daily Times is here. |  Review on Public Reviews is here. |  Review in the Bury Free Press is here

All in all the reviewers have been very kind to us, and I just hope it reflects the amount of work the creative team, the cast and everyone at the theatre has put into the production. The audience response seems to support that - so we must be doing something right!

The Creative Young Associates at the theatre have been busy too, and created a short "trailer" for the show which you can see on YouTube here

I can't pretend that it's all breezy, easy and that I'm not knackered at the end of each day (never mind each week!) but at least it's a good, hearty, well-earned knackered. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

We're performing at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds until the 15th January 2012. Still time to treat yourself and come and see us :-)

Early start...

Early indeed! Spending my day off back at home is a treat, but getting up before the sun does in order to get back to Bury for a 10:00 a.m. show is anything BUT a treat. Hey ho, the things we do!

We have been open for just over a week now, and the show is going very well, with a great response from the audiences thus far. We've had the whole gamut from the morning "Schools" shows, to a quiter, more adult-heavy (not "heavy adult" necessarily!) mid-week show, to the full on "family" shows at the weekend. Each one has been great, but quite different in their turn.

Once the school kids have warmed up, you can be pretty certain it will be a lively, noisy affair. The more mature audience responds quite differently to the gags, falls, kissing and slop - but certainly "gets" Sarah's one or two double entendre. During one of the weekend shows I don't think there was a moment in which there weren't at least a few kids shouting something about Rats...all part of the panto fun I guess!

We have had a few reviews since opening, and they have all been really positive about the show, which has been fab. You can take at look at the online version by clicking the links below:

- Whatsonstage.com

- thepublicreviews.com

- eadt.co.uk

I've also had a chance to re-visit a couple of skills I have picked up over the years. We had our BSL interpreted show last week, in which Sarah took the opportunity to have a very brief BSL chat with Ivan (the signer) to find out is name, and very quickly decide he was handsome and that she was in love! Hopefully that's what she signed anyway...

And at the weekend, we had a few rows at the front of the auditorium peopled with high school students along with their Japanese exchange friends. Not necessarily what you'd think of as your ideal or most receptive Panto-going fodder. No doubt their English is pretty great, but I would imagine a lot of the goings-on in the show would make very little sense (not sure they do to me sometimes!) Needless to say they were a tad unresponsive from the get go. So Sarah took it upon herself to make them feel welcome, and proceeded to have a chat with them in Japanese. I'm not sure whether that made them even more confused...some weird English man, dressed as a woman, speaking to them in Japanese!?! But she seemed to get her message across, and I think the effort was appreciated :-)

So it's off to the theatre for 2 more shows today. There will be some differences happening later in the week - but that's for another time!

You can follow all the latest bits of gossip from the cast by following the Twitter hashtag #DickWhittingtonBSE. Enjoy!