Panto time – and here’s the show lowdown on what’s on in Cheshire and beyond. We take a look at some of the best tickets and talk to celebrities who are about to dress up and step out on stages to entertain families across the region.
Jenny Ryan is The Enchantress
Beauty and The Beast, Lyceum Theatre, Crewe
She’s best known for her appearances on television quiz show The Chase, but this Christmas Jenny ‘The Vixen’ Ryan will be swapping the screen for the stage.
The quizzer will be appearing as the Enchantress in Beauty and The Beast at Crewe’s Lyceum Theatre and she’s looking forward to the immediacy of live performance.
‘In television, you can wait months or years to find out what people think but with a live show the immediate wall of sound is really special,’ she says.
‘It’s strange the first time you play a villain, the noise you hear is not what you might want – it's always nice to get a big cheer when you walk out but to be met by deafening boos can be bit jarring at first. I got used to it pretty quickly though and started to enjoy it.’
Jenny grew up in Bolton and as a child she spent a lot of time at the Octagon Theatre. She said: ‘My grandparents had a ramshackle house and they used to put up actors in their spare rooms so we got free tickets to shows. There’s one actor who’s now in Doctors who spent the best part of a year living with them and Matthew Kelly once made us breakfast. He was staying nearby but came round and cooked us all a full English.
‘The four week run can feel unforgiving but, honestly, we’re all having such fun it seems a shame not to do the show as many times as is humanly possible.
‘Most of the cast of the show are young, enthusiastic people who are full of energy. They’re exhausting! After a long day, I just want to get back to my own place, have a bath, put my feet up and watch Drag Race.’
Words: Paul Mackenzie
Beauty and the Beast, Crewe Lyceum Theatre, December 13 to January 5. trafalgartickets.com
Katie Price & Kerry Katona are The Wicked Stepsisters
Cinderella, Northwich Memorial Court
Reality TV stars and former glamour models Katie Price and Kerry Katona are headlining this year’s Northwich Christmas panto.
The playful pair play the wicked stepsisters, not, they insist, the ugly sisters
Katie says: ‘We don’t like the word ugly because nobody will believe it.’
Kerry, from Warrington, says she has lost count of the number of pantos she's starred in, having started when she was just three.
Katie is a rookie by comparison, although Cinderella at Northwich will be her fourth.
The girls have been ‘like sisters’ for 25 years, even going on holiday together with their 10 children.
But this will be the first time they’ve worked together since appearing on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 20 years ago.
Katie says: ‘We’re both funny people, and we’re not scared to take the mick out of ourselves. We’ve always been close. We have one of those friendships where you can go a year without talking, but when you pick up the phone, it’s like you talked to them yesterday. We’re even spending Christmas Day together this year.’
Kerry says: ‘We are fantastic friends. We were in the jungle together back in 2004, when I won.
‘Once you’ve shared a witchetty grub with someone, you’re friends for life. But we met each other years before that. Our lives are so mirrored. We’ve both been married three times, and we’ve each got five kids; we both married popstars, and we both started out in glamour modelling. We’re like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’
Katie adds: ‘Kerry’s a really good actress. I couldn’t be working with anyone better. The rest of the cast are great too.
‘People who don’t know think panto’s easy, but it’s not. You don’t just walk on stage and do it. You’ve got to learn where you come on stage, your points, the lighting, and the lines have got to flow. And most of all, you’ve got to be funny.’
Joining Katie and Kerry will be Northwich panto legends Ryan Greaves as Buttons, and Steve Moorewood as Dame Hard-Up, together with Mary Shanker as Fairy Dotty and Cara Healy as Cinderella.
Words: Rob Goulding
Cinderella, Northwich Memorial Court, December 8 to 31. brioentertainment.org/event/cinderella
Ben Nickless is Buttons
Cinderella, the Opera House, Manchester
Comedian Ben Nickless can remember the first time he was caught up in the magic of pantomime.
‘It was Jack and the Beanstalk with Russ Abbot; I think in those days it was at the Palace but I know I got to see it twice. Both my mum’s works and my dad’s works had trips to the panto every year, so I’d get on the coach laid on from Rochdale where I grew up and see the show once before Christmas and once after.
‘I still remember the impact panto had on me, and I knew then, even though I was so young, that I wanted to do that one day.’
Ben has been a mainstay of the region’s biggest pantomime for the past six years and in Cinderella he will be reunited with comedy partner-in-crime, Stockport’s Jason Manford who plays Prince Charming.
‘We have this natural chemistry which is great,’ says Ben, who TV viewers saw reach the final of Britain’s Got Talent in 2022. ‘We do get to have a lot of banter. We’re both chasing the same girl this year but seeing as he’s a prince I think we know how that’s going to end.’
Also returning from last year’s panto, Jack and the Beanstalk, is Myra Dubois as Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother.
‘When you add Myra into the mix, it’s got such great comic potential,’ said Ben. ‘I remember last year being on stage and thinking, “I’m getting paid to watch these two work,” we had such a great time.’
Now living in Chester, Ben will be able to spend Christmas at home, travelling in for the shows every day.
‘That’s a real bonus,’ he says. ‘The rest of the year I’m doing gigs all over the country but at Christmas I get time with the family, which is what we all want to do. For us as performers it’s also a pleasure to be part of everybody else’s Christmas.’
Words: John Anson
Cinderella, Manchester Opera House, December 14 to January 5.
atgtickets.com
Claire Moore is Scrooge
A Christmas Carol, The Lowry, Salford
Away from the stage Claire Moore is one of the last people you could ever imagine saying ‘Bah humbug’ to anything.
But this festive season, the performer with a peerless West End pedigree takes on the role of Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol at The Lowry.
Bolton-born Claire, who lives in Oxford with her husband, the award-winning composer and arranger Simon Hale, and children Ben and Anna, says: ‘Normally I wouldn’t work away over Christmas but because I can be around family and friends and it’s a show I love, I automatically said yes.
‘I still call Bolton home anyway and it’s so exciting to be back at The Lowry – I was there in Calendar Girls the musical a few years ago.’
The idea of putting a new spin on one of Charles Dickens’s best-known characters also appealed to Claire.
‘It’s such a timeless story and let’s face it the message has never been more relevant than it is right now.
‘It’s going to be brilliant to look at Scrooge from a woman’s perspective this spinster, a childless woman who cuts herself emotionally from the world. There’s a lot of fun to be had from delving into that but at the end of the day it’s a family Christmas musical, it’s going to be as close to Disney as you can get.’
In a career spanning 40 years, Claire has played virtually every major female role in musical theatre ranging from Les Miserables, Little Shop of Horrors, Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera. Most recently she was in The Great British Bake Off Musical in the West End.
‘I feel incredibly lucky to have had such a career and for the fact that I’m still going even though I’m not a young ‘un any more.’
A Christmas Carol, a production by Hope Mill Theatre, The Lowry, Salford Quays from December 6 to January 5.
Words: John Anson
thelowry.com
Maureen Nolan is The Wicked Queen
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Theatre Royal, St Helens
She made her name as one of The Nolans, a wholesome group of singing sisters who had a succession of big hits in the 1970s and ‘80s. But now Maureen Nolan is enjoying being evil and is looking forward to frightening children.
Maureen, who plays the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the St Helens Theatre Royal, says: ‘If there’s not a child running out scared within a couple of minutes, I’m not doing my job.
‘My sisters and I all played the princesses when we were younger before we all progressed to playing the Fairy Godmother or Wicked Queen and I’ve found I enjoy being evil and scary.’
Although Maureen – who turned 70 this year – has performed in about 30 pantomimes, she didn’t go to see them as a child.
‘We didn’t ever see a panto in Ireland – we moved to Blackpool when I was eight, but I was an adult when I saw my first panto and I remember thinking, “What is this all about?” but it is always so enjoyable.
‘As an actor it’s your one chance to over-act – everything’s so much bigger and more exaggerated in panto and if something goes wrong, you can just do it again – it's all part of the fun.
‘With panto there’s a responsibility to make sure everyone has a great time. It’s an important part of Christmas for so many people and it’s often a child’s first experience of theatre.
‘My job is to be evil, I don’t want it to be a comedy role. I feel I have done my apprenticeship and I’m an actress now so I can play whatever role is thrown at me so this is a chance to show my evil side.’
Words: Paul Mackenzie
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Theatre Royal, St Helens, November 30 to January 12. sthelenstheatreroyal.com
