Portable Panto!
October 28, 2007
Comics, singers and groups talk often of “doing the clubs”, touring around the working men’s clubs, but for the second year running a North East theatre company will be “doing the clubs” this Christmas.
Entertainments agency Beverley Artistes, currently based in South Shields but about to move into new premises, has brought in South Tyneside theatre company KG Productions to write, produce and tour a pantomime around the social clubs of the NE from Northumberland to Teesside.
At the moment, Aladdin has 33 bookings in the four week period from the beginning of December to New Year’s Eve but Beverley’s Paul Taylor confidently expects that number will increase.
“The clubs like to do something for the kids at Christmas,” he says, “and a panto fits the bill perfectly. Last year’s tour was such a success that we had no choice but to do it again – only this time bigger and better!”
Aladdin is written and directed by KG’s artistic director Peter Lathan, author of It’s Behind You: The Story of Pantomime, and has a cast of five who play eight parts between them, with Lathan appearing as the Genie of the Lamp, although in voice only, as the part will be recorded.
In the cast are Roxanne Barclay (Aladdin), Michael Carruthers (Abanazar and the Emperor of China), Iain Cunningham (Wishee Washee), Viktoria Kay ( pictured as Princess Jasmine and the Fairy of the Ring) and Wayne Miller (Widow Twankey).
“It can be pretty tough,” says tour company manager Cunningham, “because there are times when we have three shows a day, which means three get-ins and fit-ups, three performances and three get-outs, and we carry the set, props, costumes and sound equipment with us. But we enjoy it.”
Last year the company toured Cinderella for Beverley’s and Barclay, Cunningham and Kay were part of that company. Indeed this is Kay’s third touring panto and Cunningham’s – well, he admits to ten.
Miller, too, is a panto veteran, although for the last few years he has been in a theatre rather than on the road. “We did over sixty shows at the Customs House in South Shields last year,” he says, “but at least you have a dressing room to relax in between shows. It’s a bit easier than packing a van and driving miles to the next venue!
“Still,” he adds, “I love doing panto. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Whatsonstage North East will be joining the Panto on the road to see what is involved when you have two and three shows a day at different venues.
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