This holiday season in Cochrane, don’t be surprised if you hear the roar of “fee-fi-fo-fum” rumbling through town.
Cochrane Vision Theatre will be presenting Jack and the Beanstalk, the pantomime, at the Cochrane RancheHouse this December.
Lucy Mills is the vice-president of Cochrane Vision Theatre and is the director of Jack and the Beanstalk.
This is the fifth pantomime Mills has directed, a type of performance she described as an English theatre tradition where amateur groups perform plays that have singing, dancing, comedy and the lead male is typically played by a female, or vice versa.
She said the production is very humorous and has a lot of variety, with giants, fairies, goblins and ballet all included in the production.
“It is complete family entertainment for Christmas,” said Mills. “It’s a great community family event and that is what we want to elevate.”
Mills said there was a large turnout for auditions back in July and they have several people who are new to theatre involved in the production, which Mills described as exciting for the theatre group.
“They have been doing really well. I have told them that they should all be proud of themselves because they are the first cast to learn their words so quickly,” said Mills. “They have done really well on that sort of thing, especially because quite a lot are complete beginners.”
The cast and their families have been pitching in with costumes, lights, sound and choreography, with Mills describing the whole process as a collaborative endeavour.
“It has been a real team effort with people putting in as much as they can so that we can pull it off. It has been great,” Mills said.
There are a couple of changes this year. Mills said due to the demand of tickets for last year’s production, they would be putting on the production two weekends in a row, instead of the usual one. They have also moved the dates closer to Christmas, rather than their usual November dates. Mills said that the British have a tradition of going to pantomime plays on boxing day, where the whole family would go together. Moving the Vision Theatre production closer to Christmas continues with this tradition.
“People are looking at it as a family outing, because it is a pretty family oriented community here in Cochrane. It does give them the opportunity to get together and have a laugh,” said Mills. “It gets them into live entertainment. We end up with lots of children and grownups who have seen it the year before auditioning for the next one.”
The pantomime will be running Dec. 5 – 7 and Dec. 12 – 14. Sunday shows will begin at 2 p.m. only, Saturday shows will be at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and all other days the curtain will lift at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $15 and are available online, at Fabutan or Tony’s Western Wear. For more information visit cochranevisiontheatre.com.
