Sunday 28th November 2004 at the Epsom Playhouse

Staff of BBC Southern Counties Radio excelled again with another brilliant pantomime production at the Epsom Playhouse. There were two performances at 4pm and 7.30pm. I attended the matinee performance this year and really enjoyed the performance. During the interval, I caught up on gossip with Brenda from Thakeham and Chris Rolfe.

Unfortunately, Dominic Busby was unable to attend this year's station panto. Despite this, the matinee was a tremendous performance and I heard from Skirted Hamish of Storrington that the evening performance was excellant and no doubt helped by a little visit to the bar by most of the cast! You can hear the panto on your radio at least twice over the Christmas period.

JoAnne Good wore a lovely black dress during the first half of the performance. I would almost place a bet that the broach that held the front of the dress together weighed more than the dress itself! During some of her narrating, she was required to stand on a box to elevate her. It was noted with great interest by a male member of the audience that some of us near the front were able to see higher up the front of her dress than she would like to know! From then on, she held on to the front of her dress (see picture left).

Here on the right is John Radford in his first costume, Nigel Campbell in his first costume and Bill Buckley as the Genie ("but you can call me Gene" he said!).

On the right: first is Allison Ferns, then a picture of Allison, Ed Douglas and Charlie Crocker together and the last picture shows the wonderful Charlie in full flow!

First, here's Joe Talbot with moustache, then Joe after it fell off and here's Joe's sidekick - Gentleman of sport, John Lees.

First picture - Joanne Good in her "revealing" little black number getting the audience in good shouting form, next is Bill Buckley showing off his vocal skills and the last picture shows Jenny Gerard (with Ed hiding behind her), Kerry Aitken and JoAnne Good.

Here's a couple of pictures of Ed, in the first one he is full flow singing his duet with Charlie Crocker. Here's the best picture I've got of David Miller (far right), he's a fast mover - so much so that he's a bit blurry, sorry David!

First on the right is Bill in full swing, then Allison in her Princess Pickee costume and then Jo in her "safe" dress and standing on the box. We couldn't see up this one from the front rows!

Here's some pictures of Sarah Gorrell, the only person who didn't have any problems removing her make-up because she didn't wear any! In the middle picture she is seen with John Radford a.k.a. Widow Twanky in a very fetching lantern style frock!

Here's some pictures of Nigel Campbell including a cute one with Allison Ferms singing a duet

Here's a set of pictures of the sound effects department a.k.a. Neil Pringle and David Miller. They did a grand job.

Here's John Radford in each of his costumes and Neil on the far right. Neil is supposed to be consigned to behind the sound effects desk, but still managed to come out on stage several times to do a bit of narrating!

And finally, a great picture of Chris Rolfe who I met in the interval and had a great chat with. Middle picture - the final song and another nice shot of Neil Pringle and JoAnne Good

If you were in the audience, I am sure you enjoyed the performance. If you didn't manage to be at the Epsom Playhouse, you can catch the Panto on air over Christmas.

Picture Credits

Thank you to the Epsom Playhouse for the picture of the Playhouse.