Bit of a let-down: the poster that greeted festive theatre-goers in Croydon this week
What was it that David Bowie said about Croydon?
Festive fun-seekers turning up at the council-owned Fairfield Halls earlier this week having paid as much as £37 for their ticket to see a seasonal pantomime probably felt a bit short-changed when they saw a notice outside declaring that there would be only FIVE dwarfs on stage for the performance.
Anywhere else but in Croydon, this might have been dismissed as a tall story.
What was expected to be a panto was descending into some typically Fairfield farce, with the Croydon dwarf shortage seeming to stretch beyond one panto performance.
Inside Croydon’s wish-list for 2025 includes heartfelt hopes for better artistic programming at the Fairfield Halls, which has never quite recovered from having the council lavish £70million on it in an unfinished and botched refurbishment.
“The current programme all sounds rather desperate,” wrote our culture correspondent, Ken Towl.
Towl had also said “apart from the pantomime”, but that was before the latest round of Croydon cuts had seen the dwarfs reduced to just five in the performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The Croydon panto, staged over four weeks in December and January, is the Fairfield Halls’ big money-spinner. Perhaps, under operators BHLive, the panto is their only money-spinner.
Tall story: the promotional blurb on the Fairfield Halls website definitely promises the full quota of seven dwarfs
The 2024-2025 panto at the Fairfield Halls is being staged in the Ashcroft Theatre, though it appears no seats are being sold in the Circle.
The promotional blurb for its pantomime is typically cheesy: “Mirror, mirror on the wall… What’s the greatest panto of them all? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Fairfield Halls of course…”.
Top of the bill is Kellie Shirley, best known for acting in TV soaps including EastEnders and Casualty, plus a roster of panto regulars, and Mia Overfield as the somewhat dwarf-deprived Snow White.
What does it take to put on a panto?: More than five dwarfs, perhaps?
Shirley plays the wicked step-mother.
Elsewhere on the Fairfield website is a promotional piece called “Panto Facts”, including “What it takes to put on a panto”. We checked. The article doesn’t advise producers of Snow White to make sure that they have seven dwarfs.
The poster outside the Fairfield Halls this week offered some dark humour for the absenteeism among their cast: “Please note,” the notice read. “There will be only 5 dwarfs in todays [sic] performance.” It appears the Fairfield Halls is short on apostrophes as well as dwarfs.
“Don’t worry… Queen Grimelda didn’t poison them.” Like that’s in any way reassuring.
But it is impossible to say with any certainty which of the less-than-magnificent seven was unable to take the stage.
Had Sneezy caught a cold?
Was Happy depressed?
No mistake: visitors to pantoland in Croydon had good grounds to expect the full complement of dwarfs
Or maybe Doc was on emergency call at Mayday Hospital?
And don’t dwarfs have under-studies?
We asked BHLive for an explanation for their failure to stage a fully casted Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, what their adverts described as “a festive extravaganza”, but their press office down in dozy Dorset is closed…
So it is that Croydon will go down as the only place on the planet to stage Snow White and the Five Dwarfs.
As Bowie might have said: that’s so fucking Croydon.
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I hear Elf-on-a-Shelf was down as understudy, but at 15ft tall……
Maybe one of the Boro of Kulcha giraffes can step in. They were considerably shorter, and currently unemployed, despite shortage of staff problems elsewhere.
We went on the morning of New Year’s Eve, and the kids absolutely loved it. Full credit to the cast and crew for maintaining such high energy levels, even at this late stage of the run. I also felt for them because while the stalls were pretty much full I think we didn’t necessarily give them all the energy we could as an audience.
Perhaps the delayed start due to the fire alarm (a 20-minute wait) threw people off a bit. We’d had a similar note before it started but our warning was about only 6 dwarves. But we lost one part way through, leaving just five for the second half.
Despite these hiccups, it was everything we wanted from a panto and we were happy to support our local theatre for it.
Sod the Laughing Gnome. We’ve become the laughing stock.
New Year’s resolution give BHlive the boot and start putting on some decent music at this great venue!
Simple, and very expensive.
BHLive are gaming the system, well aware that their venue management agreement with the council includes generous financial compensation for them should it be terminated.
It is almost as if they are incentivised to do a poor job – in whose interests is it to terminate the Yamaha Music School hire deal? Why has the artistic director never been replaced?
There is no one at Croydon Council, neither directors, Mayor or cabinet members, who have even considered a Plan B – and the idea that the venue might be run by a committee of local volunteers is catastrophically naive.
The council then don’t see the bigger picture, that the reputation of Croydon could be improved by having a concert venue with a great reputation, that means an arts promoter that doesn’t just put on tribute acts and puts some thought and effort into putting on an interesting programme. The more serious music concerts like the Royal Festival Hall or Barbican promote. The architects that built The Fairfield Halls were the same that built The Royal Festival hall, and a fortune has been spent refurbishing it, surely it deserves better music and arts and so do the people!
Are Jason Perry & Tony Newman taking a real earned break from their duties?
We went to the pantomime on New Year’s Eve in the afternoon. During the second half the musical director, who happens to be blind, was leading the band in a song. For reasons that are unclear, “Muddles” threw a chain of toilet rolls into the audience. The audience member who caught it flung it back. But he missed the stage and hit the musical director, knocking him off his stool onto the floor. For the only time in the whole panto there was genuine drama, with cast members genuinely concerned as they hauled a blind man back onto his stool. Then the song continued.
The show played to 25 per cent capacity that afternoon, which is really worrying because the Fairfield Halls is in dire straits, and the panto should be their banker.
Does that mean nobody is Happy?
It’s a real crying shame that a venue that was built by the same architects as The Royal Festival hall is being run by low culture promoters. Even during the recent year that Croydon was London Borough of Culture there were a few classical concerts the ones I attended had good attendance. But now nothing few and far between. Has any form of petition from local people been put forward in the past, as I would gladly support this and do what I can. I’m a regular concert goer and certainly have a few suggestions on what to improve. Interesting details about the architecture
As pointed out elsewhere, the venue’s artistic director, who brought in the various international orchestras, left in late 2022 and has not been replaced