Priory Park Panto Experience will add a special sparkle to Chichester Christmas

Fairy Sparkle dreams of being the fairy on the top of the tree. Santa and Mrs Santa are working their socks off to deliver Christmas on time. But Norman the naughty elf is plotting to ruin everything. It will be up to the audience to save the day.

Tickets are on sale via https://chichesterboxoffice.ticketsolve.com/.../873649483 with performances in the Guildhall in Priory Park from December 13-15.

The show has been written by Katie Bennett and Vicky Edwards who have performed panto together in Bognor Regis over the years. They are promising a fabulous, magical, immersive festive show lasting around three quarters of an hour with the chance to meet and greet the cast afterwards and to say hello to Santa – and perhaps even give him your list.

Vicky, who will be playing Mrs Santa, explained: “It will have all the usual panto elements that we know people absolutely love but it won't be a traditional pantomime story. It is being created especially for this Christmas for Chichester and for The Guildhall. It's a small but very impressive cast because our headliner this year is Santa himself, the one and only Santa.

“You have got Fairy Sparkle who is beautiful but is in still in training and she is not the fastest learner but her great dream is to be the fairy on the top of the Christmas tree. That's what she really wants, and to do that she has to earn her Wahay Levels which are a bit like A Levels. She's working as hard as she possibly can. In the meantime you've got Santa and Mrs Santa who are preparing for Christmas, and delivering Christmas on a global scale is really quite some feat. But the problem is that Norman the Naughty Elf is planning to ruin everything. He is an elf gone bad and he is going to cause problems. It's really up to Mrs Santa and Fairy Sparkle and the audience to sort it all out.”

Vicky added: “It has all come about because The Bid, Chichester District Council and Chichester City Council have joined forces to deliver the best possible Christmas, and they approached Katie to help them, and Katie approached me. We've done a lot of panto together and we came up with this idea of a short version of panto to fill the space. They loved the idea and so we wrote it. Katie and I spent a day with a lot of tea and a lot of cake and we put it together. We wanted to create something, like tea and cake, that was wholesome and really good fun... and with all the panto elements. There is audience participation and there is sing-along and there is everything that you could hope for.

“Mrs Santa says in the show that Santa may be the face of Christmas but she is the brains of the operation. It's the old thing of behind every successful man.... She is a feminist and she has got a bit of sass but she is also very cuddly and traditional.

“If the whole thing works then it will present a very interesting proposition. We won't have an enormous set but if we can prove that we can do something in a space like the Guildhall, then it will show what a great place it is to be. It has been used as a court and as a museum and for weddings and now it is great to have panto in there, and it is such a great location in Chichester.”