Following a period of unsettled weather throughout the UK, sightings of snow were reported in Milford Haven this week. The flurries, which appear to have settled at the lower end of the town, were later found to be the result of a polystyrene blizzard caused by a sudden increase in activity of a team of scenic artists. They’re currently on a mission to meet a deadline for the opening of the Torch Theatre’s Christmas show which opens later this month. The Christmas Cuckoo’s Cooking is arguably one of the most beautiful shows the Torch has ever staged. Set in a dusty old attic where all the broken toys are kept, it possesses the rather vintage feel of a pop-up story book. However, Artistic Director Peter Doran’s concept of all the toys coming to life created a bit of a design nightmare. “I wasn’t the set designer’s favourite person…” explained Peter “…and you’ll understand why when you see the Brasso tin for example. Now, that has to be big enough for our mouse (which is really an actor of course) to climb up – so if we made everything to scale, then the cuckoo clock would have to be the size of our flytower!” Instead of attempting to invent a shrinking machine (or searching for small bottled potion labelled ‘drink me’) the slightly less arduous task of enlarging every aspect of the scenery to about 50 times their actual size is the design team’s current task in hand. Along with a Brasso tin that would hold enough polish to shine up a steam-train, and a cuckoo clock big enough to live in - there’s also a scarily impressive structure named Boris to be assembled, which in the show is better known as “the biggest spider the world has ever seen!” These are but a few of the wonderful elements in the show’s extraordinary set design. With ceiling-high piles of wood and polystyrene to be sculpted into the oversized scenery, the artists are now ardently carving, whittling, sawing, sanding, polishing and preening away – creating a squally polystyrene snowstorm in the Theatre’s workshop. But this whiteout is forecast to die down at the end of this month, just in time for the show’s opening performance. After over fifty performances to local schools the first of which takes place on 29th November to children from Pembroke Dock Community School, The Christmas Cuckoo’s Cooking opens to the public on Thursday 22nd December and runs until Saturday 31st. Tickets for The Christmas Cuckoo’s Cooking may be purchased from the Theatre’s website www.torchtheatre.co.uk or by calling their Box Office on 01646 695267. |
| Torch Theatre web site: www.torchtheatre.co.uk |
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011 |
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