Emma O’Driscoll with Tara Finn and Tim Cusack, the Queen of mean
Photo: Stuart Mackey
“WITH pantomime, it’s slightly different to a straight play. The audience is part of it and interactive, we look for their response.”
Wise words on the delivery of ‘Snow White’ to audiences at Lime Tree Theatre by Tony Cusack in the director’s chair of Limerick Panto Society.
This show, with a cast in excess of 60 plus three junior dance choruses, will open on Wednesday December 28 to offer one or two shows daily, right into January 8.
Clearly, the three decades’ experience that LPS has in producing hits is working as “the first six or seven shows are all but booked out, but there is still plenty of availability on other dates. We are flying it.”
Reader, this interview was on December 21 so that is rare going for any live show in Limerick when there is strong opposition to consider.
“We just finished the first dress rehearsal in Lime Tree last night and we had the technical rehearsal on Sunday,” Tony reports. “Coming onto the stage, it is a different space. We need to see how the props and sound are going to be, how people are going to handle the transition, how the dancers move in choreography. How the lighting and sound and special effects are going to work – we enhance the biting of the apple, complete with thunder and lightning.
“We are trying to co-ordinate the whole lot and get it wrapped up in a bow. Pantomime is like a Christmas cake, about what goes into it, putting all the ingredients in before it goes into the oven.”
He sounds thrilled with how ‘Snow White’ is refining.
The cast is mighty: Emma O’Driscoll as the princess, Tim Cusack as wicked stepmother (some dame, eh?), Paul O’Farrell as Prince Charming, Damien Shaw as the King, Laura Hunt as the mirror (remember, ’tis cracked), writer John Finn as Sherlock Holmes and working with the talented children of Expressive Art and Spotlight Stage School. Book your entertainment on www.limetreetheatre.ie
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