Cinderella Pantomime

Hello Everyone! (Hello Buttons!) I'll explain that parenthesized comment in a minute. I'm back after a busy couple of months. I've been involved in my first British Pantomime show and had a blast with it! Now at long last, I can post the pictures and video clips (yes, there are a few at the end) so all of you fine people back in the states can get a feel for my debut performance in a stage production. As you can see in the above picture, stage make-up is heavy and not my favorite thing in the world. But, it does help under the lights. As you can see, the make-up artists were trying to make me look severe and mean. I think they did a good job with that!
This is a picture of how far I was willing to go to sacrifice for the pantomime. I even painted my nails lime green! Yes, folks, me. The woman who hates nail polish with a passion even painted my nails to add to the effect of being a worldly, self-centered angry woman. And I even let my nails grow a bit, which was even worse for me than the polish. The things we do for theater!
Here I am along side my co-star J.R.R. Trollking. Yes, it's a pun. But that is the nature of British Pantomime. It's all about obvious humor and exaggerations of all sorts. The man under the wig and the paint is Roy Tunnicliffe--our fine Stake President. He did a fantastic job in his role and not many people knew it was him under there since he had a hunch back and changed his voice. Many of the little kids were scared of him, so that's a good job. Note that he and I are wearing similar colors. That wasn't planned at all, but it worked out nicely in the end. The black scarf around my neck was added to the costume at the suggestion of Liz Feil, so give her the credit for that nice touch! It was fun acting with Roy, even though at first it was hard to remember that he was not the Stake President when I was roundly shouting at him.
Here I am in my 'regular' costume. The purple dress I wear in the majority of the panto. I also have the lovely purple cloak that goes over all for the 'outdoors' scenes. That is not pictured here, but you can find pictures of it in my January 2009 posting. The red dress scene a couple of pictures above was for the ball scene. I acquired some beads and jewelry accessories while visiting mom and dad over Christmas and made the accessories for this dress. So, the whole costume is pretty much a hand-made thing. I found some perfect purple shoes to go with it as well, so that was nice.
One man who came to see the panto said I was the most elegant wicked step-mother he'd ever seen. Well, there was a reason for that since my ugly daughters provide a perfect contrast for elegant and pantomimes are all about contrasts and exaggerations. My character might be 'elegant' on the outside, but she's cold hearted on the inside!
Here I am with Rose Richardson. She played the mother of the prince--or the wife of King Rupert IV-- or the Queen. She did a nice job and even remembered her lines by the second performance!
This is me and Buttons. Remember the 'Hello Buttons!' thing at the top? Well, Buttons (Ethan Tunnicliffe) was the valet at Hardup Hall (where I live with my daughters, my lame husband, and Cinderella). Whenever he came on stage, he would say to the audience 'Hello Everyone!' and they would respond with 'Hello Buttons!'. This is a big part of British pantomime--the interaction with the audience. Buttons' role was to make sarcastic comments behind everyone's back, including mine, and to be really cute at the same time. He did a great job and the audience loved him. I had to be horribly mean to him and that was hard since he's a really sweet kid in real life. He's very respectful and considerate in normal life. And yes, he's the son of the man who played the Troll King.
Here I am with Cinderella (aka Sarah Bourne). Yes, they made her a blonde, which she and I and many others were not happy about. Since when does Cinderella have to be blonde? But, Sarah, with good grace, submitted to the higher powers and wore a wig. She did a great job and the little girls all loved her and wanted her autograph and so forth. I was horribly mean to Cinderella, of course, and Sarah was a good sport about it. Seeing as how she's my flatmate at the moment, that was important. We get along great in normal life and had a good time acting and rehearsing and all of that. Sarah is a little ball of energy and lots of fun. She's just put in her mission papers and we are looking forward to seeing where she goes on her mission. She's only been a member of the church for about four years, so this is a fun thing to see.
Here is Cinderella being dipped by her prince--played by John Richardson. John did a great job and acted his part in the style of the prince from the movie Enchanted if any of you have seen that. He was as cheesy as anyone could wish and does end up with Cinderella in the end. Sarah and John are good friends and managed to act all cheesy without laughing when it came time to perform. Rehearsals were hard for them to be serious in.
Here I am with my two lovely 'daughters'. Their names are Gertrude (Nicola Gore on the right as you look at the picture) and Griselda (Lorna Richardson). They had some of the best costumes in the whole panto and did a fabulous job. They can sing and be ridiculous and everything. They really were the hit of the whole show. If you are noticing that there are a lot of Richardson's in the show, well that's because there are and they are all related. Lorna is the mother of Ashley and John and Rose is sister-in-law to Lorna. Other Richardsons were in the panto as well, but since I didn't act with them, I didn't get pictures of them. No offense to them, of course, I just didn't think about it.
And finally, here I am with Hiss (Sam Horwell on the right) and Boo (Ashley Richardson) on the left. They are the henchmen of the Troll king and went around doing his dirty work for him and causing all sorts of problems in the panto. They were great and really brought some humor to the whole show. I didn't have much to do with them other than allowing them to do their work to further my desire for one of my daughters to marry the prince.

Now for the video clips. Unfortunately, these did not upload in the order I had planned for them to appear on here. So, you must start with the one at the bottom and work your way up if you want to go in the correct order.

The clip on the bottom is (my fourth in the panto) of me with my daughters in the kitchen at Hardup Hall. I am explaining to them that they need to learn to cook in order to be attractive to the Prince. Of course, I don't cook myself, and Hiss and Boo are going to give the actual lesson. It's just my job to convince the girls to go ahead with the lesson in spite of their reluctance. You can hear my accent fairly well in this scene, even though it cuts off before the end (sorry, my SD ran out of memory right before the end). I enjoyed this scene because I get to interact with the audience a bit right at the end (the part you don't get to see, unfortunately).

The clip on the top (next to last scene for me) is where my daughters get to try on Cinderella's slipper at long last. of course it doesn't fit, so I resort to the food my daughters had made in their cooking lesson earlier. The troll king has given me some love potion and I use it on the Almond Tart I have in my hand (the prince's favorite) and am on my way to give some to him when Fairly Glynnis (played by Julie Wilson) intervenes and causes things to go in a different direction than I intend. It's poetic justice what happens to me, I suppose. It was a fun scene to play, one of my favorites, actually and the crowd found it funny as well. I did end up with green paint all over my arm, however.

I had another clip to put on here, but it is slightly too big in size to upload on the blog. It was of me chewing out the Troll King my opening scene. Sorry, but you won't get to see that one I'm afraid and I am disappointed about that since it is a good one.

Anyway, I hope that what is here gives you a bit of an idea of British Pantomime. There are all sorts of songs (like a musical) that are sung by the principal actors/actresses (I didn't have to sing, thank heavens) and the audience is generally subjected to all sorts of things during the show, including being pulled up on stage and getting to hiss, boo, shout at the actors, etc. It is very interactive and a lot of fun. I got booed at since I was an evil character and that means I was doing a good job. It was weird coming out in the finale to do my little bow to a load chorus of boos, but that is how it works. I had so much fun that I might have to get involved in next year's panto. Guess we'll see.