The stage has been stacked away, the lighting rigs are down and the costumes are all neatly hung up - yes, the latest production by ACTS is now, as they say in all the best pantomimes, behind us. Two months of effort, starting at ‘languid’ during casting and initial read-throughs of the script and rising to ‘frantic’ as the days to curtain-up dropped into single figures, finally culminated in three dazzling evening performances of The Pirates of the Curry Bean. It’s a short but engaging tale in the good-conquering-evil style of pantomime, by the same author as last year’s production, Porridge, so we had a good idea of the standard to expect when purchasing the music, lyrics & script. Thankfully, it was largely devoid of the type of humour that the play’s title might have suggested. Being aimed at performances within junior schools, Pirates fitted well with our cast profile, with most in either their first or second childhoods, and made a great vehicle for nearly fifty people across the generations to have fun together - after all, you try saying "Aaarrrr !!" very loudly without smiling broadly !

Did it all go smoothly ? As a director, your mind’s-eye holds a vision of the performance towards which you try to guide the cast, hoping you’ll get there before the first night. However, experience tells you that there will likely be one terrible series of moments in which mishaps such as missed entrances, forgotten lines and misbehaving props decide to coincide - luckily for Pirates, that happened when rehearsing the finale for the final time and not in front of a paying public. Of course, little things do happen on the night of which the audience are unaware, none more so than when two small monkeys missed their big entrance due to unscheduled calls of nature (probably amid frantic scenes backstage). But we hope that our audiences will have taken home happy memories of three wonderful shows and many great performances, not least from our younger generation and first-time performers. They took most of the leading roles, not only treating us to their considerable acting and singing talents, but also showing that indescribable quality known as ... piratical style ! Aaarrrr !!