NEWS CHANNEL‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your five minute call; five minutes please.’
And so it begins. As you settle excitedly into your seats in the auditorium, backstage all hell breaks loose.
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| Backstage at Aladdin at MK Theatre |
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On go the wigs and the final touches of make-up; off go the working lights in the wings and up goes the safety curtain.
In the theatre time works differently. The half hour call, that important deadline when all the actors must have checked in at the stage door, is actually 35 minutes before the show starts. So when deputy stage manager Catherine Gibbs gives the final call over the tannoy: ‘This is your Act One beginners call. Act One beginners please!’ she has actually got five more minutes in which to make sure that everyone is where they should be - including you, the audience. Once Catherine gets the ‘ok’ from front-of-house the band strikes up and the house lights go down.
Catherine runs the show. She sits at the prompt desk at the side of the stage with two monitors, a computerised bank of cue switches and a copy of the script in front of her. You have to have nerves of steel to run a show and, in the case of Aladdin, a sense of humour too. It’s not often that you have to cue an elephant, a flying carpet, a bucket of soap suds and a clutch of rubber chickens.
Wing space is limited even in a whopping great theatre like Milton Keynes. With a technical crew of 16, eight dancers, twelve children and nine actors all waiting for their cue to go on or carry out a scene change it can be a bit of a tight squeeze - and that’s without a rickshaw, a flight of steps and a rail of costumes ready for quick changes. You have to keep the noise down but that doesn’t mean Gareth Gates can’t warm up his voice with a few bars of song and hop up and down on the spot a few times before he springing on to the stage for his first entrance.
Nicola Brazil, looking gorgeous in a full-length gold lame gown, wanders past humming while chomping her way through some chocolate.
Adam Pearce, a wonderfully wicked Abanazar, sweeps offstage booming, “Don’t you just love me!” followed by one of those evil panto villain laughs that echoes all the way to Stony Stratford. “NO!” comes the screamed reply from 1400 little voices out front. “Please yourself” he mutters.
“I feel a panto ballad coming on” says Andrew C Wadsworth, as the lights onstage dim to a romantic glow and the band starts to play the first bars of something dreamy. He should know. Not only is Andrew playing the Emperor of China, he is also director of the show. “Acting is much more stressful than directing” he says though in this case, Andrew has the added headache of onstage panto anarchy to deal with. Particularly in a brilliant bit of business such as that which finds Paul Burling, as Wishee-Washee, John Barr as Widow Twankey and Chris Nelson as Major Pong hurtling back and forth from the wings grabbing props from Company Stage Manager, Michael Graham, for the craziest interpretation of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
“I’ve saved myself a fortune in gym membership doing this” gasps Chris Nelson, as he dashes past for the umpteenth time chasing a bunch of loo rolls. Gareth, meanwhile, is doing a quick change at the back of the stage; thousands of fans would give their eye teeth for a chance to be a dresser on this show.
In the wings, the kids from the Myra Tiffin stage school file silently past like a well-drilled army of small Chinese circus performers. They behave so professionally that, at a stroke, they blow a hole in the old adage that you should never work with children or animals.
“Don’t laugh” says John Barr as he sashays past in a pink tutu,”this is my serious costume”. John is having a ball playing the Dame in Aladdin. “With Widow Twankey you can be a bit naughty” he says. “I’m playing her like my dear old Nan, God rest her soul. On the first day of rehearsal the director said to us all: ‘Whatever happens you’ve just got to have fun’. We’ve got the one thing that money can’t buy here. We’ve got great camaraderie. What we do is not rocket science but it’s a joy to come to work.”
And as each member of the cast waits just offstage to make their entrance from the wings for the final walk-down, that is plain for all to see. Every one of them appears to be having just as good a time in Aladdin - both on and off stage - as you have sitting out front watching the show.
BY JUDY RILEY
