(Oh yes, it did!)
Camber folk welcomed the chance to see a pantomime without having to travel very far. Actually, we only had to go to the Camber Memorial Hall! Well done to Rye Players for taking their panto on the road once more. Following the huge successes of the previous year, Rye Players did it again in December, this time with Treasure Ryeland. They were given a good ol’ Camber welcome in the form of a full house on the evening of Friday 13th December! Over the next two weeks Rye Players also took the touring pantomime to Beckley, Tilling Green and Rye Harbour’s RNLI Boathouse, playing to full houses at every venue.
The script was hilarious, and brilliantly executed by the cast, as the townsfolk of Ryeland raced with the pirates to find the hidden treasure – on board a boat called ‘Leaky bottom’! Dame Hawkins became the disastrous Ship’s Cook and flirted shamelessly with Captain Smollett, whilst the Dame’s son, Jim Hawkins, ably narrated the story to the audience.
There were a couple of ‘the-show-must-go-on’ moments … part of the backdrop scenery gently keeled over and landed on one or two of the actors. It was quickly reinstated by the stage hands and no pirates came to any harm! When Captain Smollett tried to light the fuse to the cannon, it took a little longer to ignite than planned and the very talented Stuart Clark had to ad-lib for a little while, much to the amusement of the audience! The jokes came thick and fast and the audience was in stitches. From the front rows, children of the village shouted support for the ‘goodies’ and boo-ed and hissed at the ‘baddies’, along with numerous shouts of, “… behind you!”
There was nautical theme to the whole script with sea shanties a-plenty throughout. Martin Bruce skilfully played along on his squeezebox and also entertained the audience during the interval, with some familiar foot-tapping tunes. Some old favourites like, Roll the Old Chariot Along, were tailored to our locality with lines such as “… a dinner at The Mermaid wouldn’t do us any harm…”
The bumbling pirates, in their colourful costumes, tried to outwit the townsfolk so they could find the treasure without having to do much work for it. Thankfully, by the end of the performance, the goodies had overcome the baddies and all was well in Ryeland once more!
Amongst all the brilliant performances, we saw a few familiar Camber faces: Clare Murray played Ben Bones who had been shipwrecked for many years on an island off Dungeness, Rose Cawte expertly executed the sound and lighting, whilst Pat Driver took to the Front-of-House to welcome everyone through the doors.
The entire cast was first-rate, but a special mention must go to Kenzo Drummond who played Long John Saliva’s sidekick, Flint the Parrot. Kenzo treated everyone to an energetic and hilarious performance – he is certainly worthy of a long career in acting ahead of him!
If you are interested in
joining Rye Players, whether to act, or to help with production, stage management or front of house, please get in touch with them – new members are always welcome:
www.ryeplayers.com
@ryeplayers
www.facebook.com/ryeplayers
ryeplayers@btinternet.com
The group is self-supporting and, from audience and Rye Players’ own contributions, they were able to make a donation of £650 to Rye Harbour RNLI Lifeboat. At the Camber Panto, Rye Players kindly allowed Camber Community Group to hold a raffle, which raised a further £73 towards the printing costs of Camber Community Newsletter! Thank you, Rye Players, for allowing us to raise funds at your event – and thank you to everyone who donated prizes for the raffle! Rye Players also gave away some free tickets to other local causes, enabling community groups, schools and playgroups to raffle them to raise funds.
