Serious fun...

It’s just one day until the first performance of Cinderella – oh yes it is – one day! What a mad few weeks we’ve had putting the show together and I’m sure they’ll be another mad seven weeks ahead of us as the show goes on.

I’ve said this many times before but the Coliseum’s annual panto is the biggest production of the year, not only because of how long the show runs (until 12 January – tickets still available) but also the scale of the production.

The wardrobe department have made 25 costumes for the principal cast and three costumes for each member of the chorus (two teams of eight). You don’t need me to tell you that that’s a lot of costumes, and they’re all made from scratch.

The production team have had to source or make all sorts of odd props including giant mallets, huge quantities of fake food, the most ridiculous being a magical moving fox’s tail.

The education department have been organising panto workshops for schools in the area, delivering much more than they would normally do for a Coliseum production.

The LX department have been finding just the right clock chimes sound effects – you’d be surprised just how many variants there are.

The amount of weird decisions that we have to make as a team during panto make you wonder what an odd job working in theatre (especially panto) is. Is that the right type of glitter? Is this the most appropriate sound of screeching tyres? Should we use mallets or frying pans to hit the dame with? Last week, one of our biggest problems was trying to fit Fine Time in a trunk without damaging his wig.

There is an internal logic to this madness though – these are all important decisions to making the quality panto that you will see on stage. Panto might look easy and improvised but it’s serious fun. There’s a thought process behind each gag and scene making it look effortless on the night. Whether it’s panto, Chekov or Shakespeare, the motivation behind the characters in the world of any specific play is really important.

These panto problems are really quite fun to have to solve.


Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director