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PANTO: Rula's rules for a proper panto
So many pantos love to bill themselves as traditional - despite their array of reality TV stars.
But if Rula Lenska is in the cast, you can be sure that it really is traditional in the very best sense of the word.
Rula is the Enchantress in Jack And The Beanstalk at Worthing's Connaught Theatre this Christmas (December 5-January 4) - in a return to panto she didn't think she would make.
"It's the first time I have ever played a goodie... But I had decided a couple of years ago 'no more panto, that's it, I have done them all'.
"I had a bit of uncomfortableness in the last panto I did. I won't go into exactly what. But I love traditional panto, and I just said 'no more'.
"I believe that panto is important. It is most children's first experience of live theatre, and it is something that I take seriously. You have to be very careful when you are playing the forces of good and evil. There are certain rules that you must not cross over."
Such as?
"As a fairy godmother, you do not slap your thigh!"
And clearly that's the kind of rule that was being broken, along with the presence of people there simply because of their reality-TV profile.
But perhaps with the public, a reaction is setting in at last: "There are the beginnings of admission of boredom regarding reality TV and all that sort of thing. But sadly now we have got the credit crunch there is going to be even less money spent on drama.
"But hopefully it might mean the end of the era of using people in areas that they are not trained for and hoping that they will just put bums on seats."
Even so, Rula laments the success of shows such as Big Brother as a sad indictment on us all: "This was supposedly what the biggest viewing public wanted to watch, people being humiliated and put in situations of emotional and physical controversy and unpleasantness. And the audience seem to love it. The uglier it gets, the more people enjoy it."
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Weather for Chichester
Saturday 11 February 2012
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