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Cinderella – Nottingham Arts Theatre – December 2015

storyville

"Life isn't perfect, and it never will be, but for the brief two hours of a Pantomime, it is... pretty much"

I spoke these lines in voice-over towards the beginning of Jeanie Finlay's 2014 BBC Storyville documentary: Panto! Mayhem, Make Up and Magic which aired a year ago today!

These lines were recorded before the run of Puss In Boots in 2012, and that show certainly reinforced my opinion. So many happy memories and such fun.
Fast forwarding to this year and to the longer run of Cinderella (18 shows compared to 13) and it has been a privilege to work with many of the same people from Puss In Boots and a good deal of new faces too.
What an amazing cast and crew I have just had the pleasure of working with. Professional, committed and talented across the board. Cinderella is perhaps the most magical pantomime of them all and this show certainly felt that way: A brilliant cast and a sizzling script with just the right balance of music and jokes to entertain the very young to the very old (like me!)
Two very different, but equally beautiful and charming Cinderellas through a host of well cast and colourful characters, down to the two brilliant teams of juniors - this show has been a delight to devote 3 months of my life to!
Thank you to our wonderful audiences who helped to create 18 memorable tellings of this magical tale!

This has been one of the best shows I have ever done and I shall miss it, but will cherish wonderful memories of this year's festive magic.

we sang, we danced, we laughed and cried
we joked and groaned and custard pied
there were crowns in fishnets
and steps on slippers
and somewhere perhaps
the smell of kippers
things sped up and things slowed down
and rags turned into a beautiful gown
pumpkin and mouse became horse and carriage
all rounded off with a prospective marriage

"as close to perfection as you're going to get" - Kev Castle - NHR

Yes, Kev... I do believe you're right
Amanda, Ray, Amy, the wonderful cast and crew and all our audiences...
Thanks for the magic
Thanks for the memories xox
‪#‎pantoptc‬ ‪#‎Cinderella‬ ‪#‎Theatre‬ ‪#‎Nottingham‬

Making Your mind up

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“That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson

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Something Lovely while I discover how this works

Instead of using the rather bland Lorem ipsur overusedalotinthiscontext, I thought I would place some rather lovely words from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables

No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep. Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.

In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant. A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times, almost unbearable.

And, in addition to this,—all these contradictions are the lightning play of love,—they were fond of laughing, they laughed readily and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they sometimes presented the air of two boys.

Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always present and will not be forgotten. She is there with her brutal and sublime object; and however great may be the innocence of souls, one feels in the most modest private interview, the adorable and mysterious shade which separates a couple of lovers from a pair of friends.

They idolized each other.

The permanent and the immutable are persistent. People live, they smile, they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of their lips, they interlace their fingers, they call each other thou, and that does not prevent eternity.

Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they fascinate each other in the darkness with their hearts which they throw into their eyes, they murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime, immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.

Les Mis quote Franklin twilight

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Confusion abounds

Well how does all this work, then? Eeeek!!