Curtain Call brings The Little Mermaid to Portsmouth Guildhall Studio for an intimate panto

The Portsmouth-based company is putting on The Little Mermaid in Portsmouth Guildhall Studio from December 19 to 27.

They tell the familiar tale of the mermaid princess who craves to explore the world above the waves. Un her quest for adventure she makes a terrible bargain with the evil sea witch who is trying to take over the ocean. Can her friends Crabby and Prince Eric help defeat the evil witch and restore harmony beneath the seas?

Charlotte C-K wrote the script, directs and also stars as principal boy – Prince Eric.

‘It does play on the traditional Hans Andersen story that you may know, but hopefully there's lots of nods to the familiar tale too,’ she explains. ‘It's not a traditional panto, but it has traditional panto elements in it. It's quite important for us to keep some of those things –like the prinicpal boy being someone who identifies as a female, we like to have a tap number in there, we keep the good side and the bad side on the stage. I'm sure we're not the only people to have done The Little Mermaid as a panto, but it isn't like your Cinderella or your Aladdin, or those key ones. It's nice to offer something different.’

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Aled Price, who plays the villain of the piece, Ursula adds: ‘We bounced around a lot of ideas. I liked the idea of Pinocchio, but Charlotte wasn't convinced… But we can get our creative teeth stuck into something that isn't being done everywhere. There is a lot of competition out there and you really need to stand out.

‘It's not very exciting for people to have Cinderella four times in one city!

‘When we pick these, we start from scratch. We're not a company that has £25,000 to put into a product. Charlotte does this all on her own, from writing the scripts to organising the costumes - we need to highlight how amazing she is!

This is the company’s second year in the Studio’s intimate space for their Christmas show.

‘It's actually our fifth year doing panto, but fourth show because of that word we won't mention. We ran for two years at The Pyramids – we built a theatre in the Plaza space in there. But this is our second year here now and it's lovely – it's such a nice space and it really works well for how we do our panto.

‘And we also have our really exciting LED screen. We love our screen because it means we can do so much with it – we're not stuck with one backdrop, we've got nice videos, beautiful colours, lots of fun things going on.’

Getting youngsters off all abilities involved is crucial for Curtain Call, too.

‘Another important part of it for me is having talented young performers from the community in it,’ says Charlotte, ‘so we're very inclusive. We've got children with various additional needs, and we cater for them, it's about creating a panto family for everyone. We remember being in that juvenile ensemble working with professionals when we were young, and it's really important to create that.’

Aled adds: ‘It's a huge learning curve. that's why we're not too hot on: “Who's the best in the room?” That's not so important in the grand scheme of things because in an audition you do see these people with great muscle memory who can pick something up in a minute, but you don't actually see people for what they can actually do – you have to give them time to develop and I think we really focus on that.’

‘With the children it's about what they can get out of it,’ says Charlotte. ‘A massive part of it for me is seeing the children develop and what they get out of it and the experiences they take away.’

Keeping things affordable is also important to the company – family tickets for four are £56, for five it’s £68.

‘We hope tickets are as affordable as possible,’ says Charlotte, that's a key thing for us – a professional theatre experience for families, for children, for adults! That's always been important for us, but especially in the last couple of years.

‘Sometimes panto gets kind of poo-poohed but it is actually some children's first experience of theatre – it might be the only time they get to see theatre.’

There is also a special relaxed performance on December 22 at 11am where all tickets are £6 and carers go free.

For all tickets go to portsmouthguildhall.org.uk.