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Aladdin poster

There are more photos from this production below. Selecting any of the small thumbnail images will show a larger version of the picture in the main part of the page. »

Aladdin by Iain Lauchlan & Will Brenton - Abanazar

- Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury. Directed by Robert Hamlin.

Well, my swan-song as an actor was overacting horribly in panto once again! A nicely designed production in this small theatre with a cast of mixed ability. Anna Rose played Aladdin well, Steven Swift was a marvellous Wishee Washee with a brilliant rapport with the audience and an ad-libbing talent that convulsed the cast as well as the audience most of the time. Sadly, the actor playing the genie (no names, but if you're a fan of homegrown daytime soap you'll know him) was...well...a plank of wood. It has always puzzled me why people of no discernible ability whatever in any kind of performing art are so irresistably drawn to this business - and, more, how they ever get work. Oh well.

The problem for the baddie in 'Aladdin' is that very often you're the show-opener - the first thing the audience see. In every other panto the baddie turns up a couple of scenes in, once the kids (especially the smaller ones) have grown accustomed to the lights and the noise and the shouting on the stage. But with poor old Abanazar you enter, probably with a bang and flash and certainly with a maniacal laugh, immediately after the lights in the auditorium have all gone out (scary enough in itself if you're four). Of course your entrance is greeted with wails of dismay and terror and often the banging of seats as the frightened children are removed to the safety of the foyer. Except, in this production, my second appearance was through an entrance only accessible by walking through the foyer. Oh dear. No sooner had little Sean or Mary been comforted and calmed down with assurances that the nasty man was only on the stage and couldn't get them, than the door of the foyer opened and in the nasty man strode, very much here in the real world. However much I tried to be out of character, smiling benignly and uttering soft reassurances, it was always the cue for a fresh storm of tears. How many of those poor children bear the emotional scars to this day!

I wasn't aware at the time that this was to be my last appearance as an actor, but that's how things worked out. Twenty years is a nice round figure and that's how long I'd been a working actor. Three months after this show finished, for all sorts of reasons but predominantly terminal disillusionment with the kind of people that infest the business (and one big let-down in particular too many), I turned my back on acting with very mixed feelings and, in one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, took a job as graphic designer at a small web-solutions company in Derby...and that's another section of the site!