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!