The actors of a popular theatre company in Sydenham performed Hansel and Gretel with just one week's notice after a drop in sales when they last performed it.
In March 2024, Sydenham Productions performed Hansel and Gretel to the community after a very successful autumn and early New Year.
However, despite great feedback from the audience who watched it, ticket sales were 30 per cent down on their target.
This put the company’s future plans of performing George Orwell’s 1984 and Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through The Looking Glass during the summer holidays in jeopardy.
To try and salvage the company’s losses, Spontaneous Productions revived Hansel and Gretel and performed it on May 18, 2024 at the Sydenham Centre as a fundraiser in a pay-what-you-can system in the hope of generating more revenue to make up for the unsuccessful performance in March.
The News Shopper exclusively spoke to the cast about how they were told just the week before that the show would go on.
Francesca Anderson, who played Wilma, explained: “I don’t remember exactly where I was when they asked us to do it again, but it was a few messages over a couple of weeks asking if we would hypothetically perform the show again.
“But in between this show and the one we did in March, I’ve done two shows so it was also about making the dates work.
“I felt quite good about the first last-minute performance because we’ve done the show enough to know what to do.
“In the end, we’re really hoping to raise funds for Spontaneous Productions since it’s a very difficult time for any theatre company at the moment with cuts being made all over the place.”
Cast and volunteers arrived at the Sydenham Centre at 12pm before the first show was set to kick off at 2.30pm.
In this time, the company managed to turn the empty stage into the Hansel and Gretel set, which included the “Meanwhile Projector” which showed other Hansel and Gretel’s parents travelling all over the world to find them.
Paul D Stephenson, who played Hansel, said: “It was a surprise.
“The first thing that comes to mind is ‘oh, I have to now remember all the dances, dialogue, where things go.’
“Just trying to remember everything was difficult because you’re doing work at the same time, not just acting, but also your day job.”
The performance saw visitors of all ages, including those who had seen the play in March and wanted to watch it once more.
Etta Ermini, who watched the show with her one-year-old twins, said: “I loved it and my children loved it,” and even offered to help out with future performances in choreography with Spontaneous Productions.
Despite fears from the cast over whether they would remember how the performance went, Jyo Miarkali, who played Gretel, said she was “surprised” over how much “muscle memory kicks in”.
The stage and audience were set up by unpaid volunteers who were willing to give up their Saturday to help out with the last-minute performance.
Long-time volunteer Keira said: “It’s always nice coming back to volunteer for Spontaneous Productions, but this time it was a bit of a shame because we didn’t make enough funds with the last show, so it was under some difficult circumstances, but it’s always nice to come back to see familiar faces.
“It has been quite a nice day with everyone coming together to put the show on, and it deserves such a big audience because we all put such a big effort into it.”
Director Jonathan Kauffman said the day had been “quite stressful”, and getting it back on after six weeks was “hectic”.
Despite saying it was hard to get people to watch the show on the day, Jonathan said: “We had a really good audience and we hope there’s more to come.”
Following on from the revival, Spontaneous Productions have been able to put on their refugee-based Home From Home performance, which tells the real stories of refugees in south London, on Saturday, June 22.
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