00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor with Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:06 this afternoon to speak to Charlotte CK, who is bringing one of four pantos to Portsmouth
00:11 this Christmas. Charlotte, your one is with the company Curtain Call and you'll be in
00:15 the Lens Studio Theatre at Portsmouth Guildhall. And you're doing an interesting one, you're
00:20 doing Rapunzel, aren't you?
00:21 Yes, we are doing Rapunzel. We open on the 19th to the 27th. Yeah, and we're in the fabulous
00:29 studio, the Lens Studio at the Guildhall.
00:32 And the fact that you're in a relatively small space shapes the panto, doesn't it? Because
00:36 you're saying it's very much an intimate, interactive panto that you do, isn't it?
00:42 Yeah, it's great. We can be really engaged with the children in the audience. We're not
00:49 far away from them, so every child can have a really good view and they can interact with
00:53 all the characters. If a character runs into the audience, they're going to be no more
00:58 than kind of five, ten metres away from them, etc. So it's really fun, it's really good.
01:03 And your nation, the sort of Pompeii Panto escape, is that you try and do the off-the-beaten-track
01:08 pantos, don't you?
01:09 Yes, we try and do something slightly different. So we love all pantos, but try and just do
01:16 something that's not done as often or something that maybe people wouldn't think of as a panto.
01:22 We also have, we don't use traditional scenery, we have an LED screen, which I haven't said
01:27 about. We have a few items of scenery, but we're quite minimalistic. But we have a huge,
01:35 it's basically like a huge television screen, a video wall behind us.
01:39 And you interact with that then?
01:42 We interact with that, the audience can interact with that, and it just gives us a lot of freedom
01:47 with what can go on the video wall. So it's kind of like the video wall is choreographed
01:53 to the music, and you can have all sorts of beautiful artwork, lots of colours and things.
01:58 So it's great, it's good, it's different.
02:00 Fantastic. Four pantos in one city, that's pretty good going, isn't it?
02:03 I know, the people of Portsmouth are very lucky. So much to choose from, so much talent.
02:10 Like Portsmouth is an amazing, I think we probably don't get much credit, but there
02:15 is so much talent in Portsmouth.
02:16 Absolutely. So if someone was thinking, well, I'm only going to go to one panto this year,
02:21 why should they choose yours?
02:23 We are inclusive, not exclusive. We hope that we really do cater for the youngest child
02:31 to the oldest adult. Everyone's welcome. We hope that everyone will feel very welcome
02:39 and with hopefully quite a reasonable cost as well.
02:43 Fantastic. Well, Charlotte, really lovely to speak to you. Your panto is in the Lens
02:47 Studio at Portsmouth Guildhall. It's Rapunzel, and it's from December 19th to the 27th, isn't it?
02:54 27th, yeah. There's still some tickets available, so.
02:57 Fantastic. Well, good luck with everything and good to speak to you.
03:01 Thank you.
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