“The rest of the year you’re looking for staging choices wth high integrity, but Christmas is always a wonderful chance to get the mirror ball out!” The QR speaks with Matt Addicott, Arts Director of Glasgow’s Platform Arts Centre about Sleeping Beauty…
Platform Arts Centre, deep in the beating heart of Easterhouse, Glasgow, offers a year round selection of ‘cutting edge performance, music, visual arts and participation.’ Normally a receiving house, Christmas sees the centre commission and stage its own production. This year playwright Lewis Hetherington (Mother Goose fae Easterhoose), has turned his pen to Sleeping Beauty, and Matt Adicott has been working hard to translate words to action…
How would you describe Platform’s vision of Sleeping Beauty to the Christmas Theatre going public?
Well yes, we have got a bit of a twist. I think anyone that’s coming along with the basics of the story in their mind will not be disappointed. However what we have is very fast paced, full of fun, and very Scottish.
I think Lewis has done a cracking job. This is his seventh script — I think — for a Christmas show here at Platform. In that time we’ve both learned a great deal about how to keep on our front foot and keep people’s interests. It’s a cracking script.
It’s a company show at 65 minutes with no interval, now that makes it very family friendly in The QR’s opinion…
Yeah, I think so. There’s always tension, and certainly the folks in the bar would like an interval, but we feel as though this works best for the show. You work so hard to get people’s interest, to get them into the story…to stop for 15 minutes and then have to do all that work again feels like a lot to ask! We’re a small team here at Platform, and there’s a principal cast of four.
This year, for the first time we are being supported by a chorus from our neighbours at Glasgow Kelvin College. That’s helping to fill what is quite a big stage here: 12 metres square! It’s fabulous.
How was casting for the show?
It’s incredibly exciting. For me, a lot of my job is sitting in front of the computer and trying to keep on top of all the emails. To have the opportunity to work with four such highly talented, skilled and experienced performers has been a pure joy from beginning to end. We’ve had a hoot.
Jo Freer is great, as are Irene Allan and Taz Moreno, who play the evil Jimmy, King of Mattress World and Rocket the dog respectively. I’m not being generous when I say they’re amazing, it’s been a real pleasure to work with them. Yolanda Mitchell is also brilliant playing Beauty: I think this is her first panto or Christmas show, and she’s settled right in!
It’s been a real treat. I mean you’re always a bit nervous when you’re woring with you new people — I’ve only worked with Itxaso Moreno before, but it’s been a very, very happy rehearsal room. We’re having a lot of un, and hopefully that will translate to the stage.
How grounded in place would say Sleeping Beauty is?
Perhaps not as strongly as previous years’, like Mother Goose Fae Easterhoose! That said the show is set in a mattress shop, and it’s in the East End for sure. I’ve been here 10, or 12 years now, and especially at Christmas time, with this sort of work especially, audiences really like a little reference to home here and there, don’t they?
Do you enjoy producing the show?
Well we’re generally a receiving house, so it’s a real treat to have an opportunity to produce. We do have quite an established groove of being a receiving house, so we don’t tend to have huge costume or prop stores. We kind of start from scratch each time, because we don’t know when the next show we produce will happen.
In the context of environmental sustainability, there’s a particular challenge. It’s something that one of our designers, Claire Halleran’s been really conscious of. So, there are bits of the set that came from previous Christmas shows — some were stored with ReSet Scenery, a sustainably minded business which provides a circular alternative to landfill for used sets & props. I think more than ever we’re thinking about how we can reuse and recycle, and the journey of component parts in the things we make.
Of course there’s always the buget to think of; even thinking of the start of the financial year it already doesn’t stretch so far as it might have done in past years. Everyone is battling this now, and trying to work out a way to get the money that the industry needs.
Turning back to the show, are any favourite moments emerging in the show before it opens?
Absolutely, for a Istart there’s some beautiful music, and particularly moments where the story and music collide. I won’t give anything away though! I want to leave these big treats for the audience to see. They might recognise a little bit of a song here and there, and there’s some particularly storyful songs used in the show.
Overall I’m just very pleased with where the performers have taken their characters, and the story too. There’s so much which is emerging as they play and search for the light and shade in the moments they’re playing.
Now, what are you hoping the audience are thinking of, or talking about when the show’s done, and the curtain’s fallen?
The last time we put on a Christmas show was 2019, and with the cost of living crisis and everything that’s going on, I just really hope that people leave on a high having had a really fun, and enjoyable hour. I hope they leave feeling hopeful and optimistic about Christmas and the holidays.
Do you personally get any Festive thrill from putting on Christmas theatre?
That’s a funny one because most of the year, I have to admit I don’t care too much. You have to start thinking about it so early in the year, basically as soon as this one’s down! In January we’ll be making plans for what happens next Christmas, and the thought does make me feel a bit queasy so early in the year.
But…by the time it kicks around to October-November, and we’re into rehearsals, well I mean, it’s a perfect way to end the year! The rest of the time you’re looking for staging choices wth high integrity, but Christmas is always a wonderful chance to get the mirror ball out, dip into the dressing up box, and just do things for fun and pleasure!
Christmas Theatre 2022 will be one of the most crucial festive seasons in stage history. TheQR is talking to as many of those making theatre in the UK this year as possible, to play a small part in raising their profile, and opportunities for a successful run. Though many of us face a tough winter, financially speaking, a magical night of theatre offers a (warm) escape for a few hours, and if you have the expendable income available will help support the livelihoods of those who keep that magic alive.
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