madgarlickThere is a bit of a back story to this pantomime. In 2002 I was working aboard the Thomson Cruise Ship TSS The Topaz, and had the opportunity to work with some of the friendliest, funniest, and most talented people in the world. Christmas was looming and the company who provided the entertainment had bought a Christmas play which was to be performed over the Christmas and New year cruises. The play they had bought was loosely based on Harry Potter and to be quite frank, was crap. All the actors were complaining daily as they were rehearsing this play, and so I thought i would read it and see what the problem was. I read it, was shocked that somebody had been paid thousands for this 45 minute monstrosity and made a flippant coment that I could do better. The Cruise Director Bruce (a fabulous giant of a canadian with a penchant for ladies clothing) took me up on the offer, and so i had 48 hours to come up with a christmas Panto blockbuster. So 48 hours after being set the challenge, this script was placed on his desk, it was then photocopied numerous times and handed to the cast, we had just over a week to produce the show, rehearsals happened day and night around the already running shows. It was a great pleasure to work with so many very talented people, who really worked so very hard to make this pantomime work. Not only did it work, it was a resounding success, brought a very close team even closer and saw the funniest vicar since geraldine granger of vicar of dibly fame (rob made his one line last five minutes!). The audiences (including the Greek captain and Officers laughed heartily at all the right places, and also at all the other places where the fabulous cast endulged themselves.) To make things easier, the songs and dance routines were ripped from other shows that the cast were performing in, apart from nothing like a dame (which was re-worded for the panto) and also we saw the debut of Miss Benne as a Singing sensation, who (despite robs attempts at doing so) really stole the show with her fantastic rendition of the Patsy Cline classic ‘Crazy’. The panto is not perfect, but i don’t have the heart to re-write it. The running time is approx 1hour 30mins.
