Prince Charming

A full run of the pantomime this afternoon, though not with a full cast (December rehearsals traditionally have at least one person missing at each one due to other - usually Christmas related - commitments) hence our director is reading in for the Baroness in the photo. Prince Charming has just met Cinderella in all her finery at the ball and is totally smitten. The ugly sisters are not impressed.
As you can see, we have scenery and some bits of costume are being tried. Our lighting chap is watching proceedings to get an initial impression as to how the scenes should be lit. But the pressure is really on now as we only have three more weeks (7 more rehearsals) before the Dress. Scenery needs completing and painting. Final costume choices need to be made. And - most importantly - we cast need to learn our lines and put our scripts down!
As this is my 27th pantomime, I know from previous experience that it will all come good in the end. But a lot of hard work will be needed, especially once Christmas is over. Let us hope it will not all be in vain. I can’t see that the requirement to wear masks in a theatre will be relaxed in early January so we will almost certainly be performing in front of a masked audience. How that will affect the Panto traditions of audiences calling out “behind you” or “oh yes it is/oh no it isn’t”, remains to be seen. As far as I am aware, we cannot encourage an audience to shout out, but I don’t think we can stop them if they do it if their own accord! And that is still assuming tighter restrictions are not introduced and no cast members test positive for the omicron variant, either of which could lead to performances being postponed or cancelled. All we can do is keep working at it and hope for the best. This show has been in rehearsal for nearly eighteen months, one way or the other, and we are determined we will get to perform it.