Promising villainy on the Portsmouth panto stage this Christmas

She will be our Malevolent in Beauty and the Beast running from December 13-January 5.

“Southampton was great. It went very well and it was a lot of fun and now this is my first time here (at the New Theatre Royal), and it is a lovely theatre. It's a Frank Matcham theatre and it feels traditional and it's going to be really interesting being here this Christmas after playing such a large theatre last year. If you're on a massive stage in a massive auditorium, the performance has to match that level. It has to match that grandeur but if you're in a more intimate place, you can get away with so much more. You can be so much cheekier.

“And yes, I am the villain again. I don't know what that says about me! But I'm always the villain and I love doing it especially when you have an early start to the day. You can use that early start in the performance! But I'm a lovely person really. I'm not that evil but I have a lot of fun especially playing with the audience, and so much of what you do comes from them. Sometimes they don't want to look you in the eye if you pick on them but you just move on to the next person!”

Rachel was speaking at the September panto launch: “I haven't seen the script yet but I gather there are a lot of rhyming couplets that you just can't get wrong. You've got to get them right. You can't get yourself out of a tricky situation by making up your own couplets! But I love that. It's a nice nod to the old-fashioned way of playing pantomime but it is also quite updated in terms of what I say.”

It has been another big year for Rachel since Southampton’s panto last year: “This year I had a major operation. I had reconstruction from breast cancer and that took me out for quite some time. It is not just a prosthesis shoved into the breast area. It really is a big operation, and they're just so clever in what they can do. So I've really been recuperating from that. I feel pretty good now and I think I've got back pretty quickly but it does take a while to recover.”

It's all been an experience which does inevitably change you: “I try not to sweat the small stuff as much as I did before. I'm just grateful for everything. I am much more aware of everything and you feel so much more gratitude. You appreciate family and all the friends that have really helped you. It puts everything in perspective. I'm a big worrier and that's never going to change but I do say to myself more ‘Rachel, this really doesn't matter!’ But also once you've gone through something like that the nice thing is that you are quite surprised how strong you actually are mentally.”

The cast is Chris Aukett as Dame Dorothea; Lewes Roberts as the Prince/Beast; Christian James as Potty Pierre; Breanna Bradshaw as Beauty; Rachel Stanley as Malevolent; Becky Vere as Fairy Formidable; and Brendan Hooper as Jean Jacques. Tickets from the venue.