Well after being very disappointed about not getting the part of Dandini, I got over that and settled with having a chorus part. It was nice to get a rest actually and had a lot of fun learning the songs and dances. We had a bit of a treat this year as we had genius musical Director Mark Dickman make a guest appearance to arrange the musical score for us and give us some coaching. He managed a couple of rehearsals beforehand and most of the performances with the others being picked up by the very talented Carl Greenwood. With help on drums from Steve Huxley, we had a brilliant little band which lifted the performances no end. We also had several new members join the group for the pantomime. They were all really talented and I hope they stay for many more shows in the future.
For me, the show, written and directed by Geoff Baker, started off really slowly, and we seemed to be going over the same few songs and not progressing to others, even towards the end I was not as sure as I would have liked to have been on some of the moves for the later songs. I just have to accept the fact that this is the way it is when you are in the chorus, lots of sitting around and waiting. It was nice not to have to learn lots of lines! The songs were not all really well-known, but that didn’t detract from the show, the songs were very well-chosen and it exposed us and the audiences to tastes of things we wouldn’t normally hear.
The performances went well and we had record audiences. The feedback we received was amazing, with most saying it was the best pantomime we had ever done! Just need to make sure we live up to expectation next year!
