A defiant Perth panto dame is facing a real life battle to save Christmas.
With theatres preparing for their gloomiest ever festive season, veteran star Barrie Hunter is determined to keep audiences smiling with a radically redesigned and covid compliant show.
Because of tightening restrictions, the Fair City’s traditional pantomime was postponed until next year.
But Barrie, who writes and directs as well as performs, didn’t want families and schools to miss out on their yearly seasonal treat.
He came up with a whole new adventure that goes beyond the auditorium of Perth Theatre.
The show, titled Oh Yes We Are! – A Quest for Long Lost Light and Laughter, will take small groups of audience members on a tour of the recently restored building, meeting a variety of colourful characters along the way.
And the promenade-style experience will be broadcast live via Zoom, so fans can enjoy it from the comfort of their own sofas.
“We want to see beyond the doom and the gloom, and find the light and laughter again,” said Barrie.
“I didn’t want it to become Covid: The Panto. Apart from anything else, you have to think about the fact that there’s a great likelihood that there will be audience members who will be seeing this – through their screens or in person – who will have lost loved ones to the pandemic or may have been very ill themselves.
“That’s not something you can make light of. But what you can do is respond to the things that we’ve all been affected by, and try to find some positivity out of it.”
The show will feature a cast of characters in different rooms of the theatre, with Barrie starring as dame Heidi Hoall.
He will be joined by panto regulars Helen Logan as villain Corrupta, and Ewan Somers as twins Duggie and Phillup.
Barrie said the theatre – “so tall and so airy” – was ideal for the new kind of show. “There’s so much more room than there was in the previous building,” he said. “We couldn’t have even remotely considered this show in the old building.”
“The whole point of the show is about celebrating coming back into a building that you’ve not been allowed to get into and celebrating all that the building stands for,” the director says. “The tour of the theatre becomes a celebration of the building.”
The curtain rises on December 10, and shows will run until Christmas Eve.
