Very amateur dramatics

This morning I received a text from my brother inviting me to go and see our actor friend in a panto.  It intrigued me: Levi has told us before that he doesn't do panto.  I knew this group must be desperate.

Desperate was not the word.  The correct term was disastrous.  It was a poorly written story delivered by actors who didn't know their lines or cues.

However, we had a lot of fun.  Some highlights:

• One of the ugly sisters forgot her line.  Prince Charming came on with the script and the ugly sister got out reading glasses to read the line: "Why?"
• All the actors left the stage, then Prince Charming came on and said, "They don't know what they're doing.  We're supposed to be doing a song!" and they all came back to do their song.
• The actor playing the wicked stepmother had taken ill before yesterday's performance so the fairy godmother was also playing the wicked stepmother.  She wore her wicked stepmother dress the whole time and read from the script for the wicked stepmother part.
• They gave out sweets, supposedly just to the children, but there was only one child there and a small audience, so everyone got some.
• The best jokes were made by the hecklers.  For example, shouting "Pardon" at the character who was hard of hearing and kept misunderstanding everyone, booing Prince Charming, and calling out "She got you out of deep water!" when Cinderella became captain of the pirate ship and saved the day.
• At the end of the play, after the curtain call and encore, one of the cast announced that the girl playing Cinderella was celebrating her 18th birthday today.  So we all sang happy birthday to her.
• Afterwards we went to the pub and talked about how much fun we'd had.