As it comes to the end of another Too Friendly year I thought it a good time to look over some of the highlights and lowlights of 2009.
The year started off with some of the cast performing and working on All Soul’s biggest pantomime to date. Peter Pan (complete with flying) went down a storm with both the critics and the audience and, for me in particular, was such a great laugh to work on as it also marked my first time playing the Dame!
We then started work on Miles’s Tredinnick’s hilarious ‘It’s Now Or Never’… This was a difficult play to put together. The pace is frantic, the set complicated and it’s quite wordy… but the results were fabulous! A real crowd pleaser, the show delivered jokes by the second and had audiences rolling in the aisles. Photos of us even made it to the authours website - checkout the page for the play.
The second show of the season was an even bigger challenge. We performed two full plays on the same night. John Godber’s ‘Bouncers’ along with another of his plays, the classic ‘Shakers’. Each play is a four hander with either an all male or all female cast. Each play is set in and around the local cocktail and we wanted to make the staging something different. Therefore we converted the entire venue into ‘Shakers Nightclub’ complete with a dancing floor, disco lights, smoke machines and a D.J. Once again the critics loved it, giving us one of our best reviews ever, and some great responses from the audiences too.
As ever the Murder Mysteries at the Royal Clifton did well. Each one selling out again and we will be doing even more of them in 2010.
Without any doubt the lowlight of the year was the loss of our great friend Tom Hancox. Tom was a member of the company for many years. Initially backstage, he was responsible for the lights and sound on many shows and latterly he started performing and even writing for us.
Tom was an amazing man. Full of life and verve and brimming with talent. He was an inspiration and friend. He will be sadly missed.
Tom, Mark and Alec take their bows
Looking forward to the new year some of us will be starting the new year in pantomime once again (… Oh Yes We Wil!l) as we perform in ‘Dick Whittington’. Then we start work on the next Murder Mystery and also start the preparation for the next big show Alan Acybourn’s ‘Time Of Your Life’. More details of which are coming soon.
A big thank you to all the people that have come to see the shows over this year and especially to those that have written in. We really could not have done it without you and we hope to see you in 2010.
Merry Christmas!
