Brighton Theatre Group finally take to the stage with Shrek

Brighton Theatre Group hit the stage with their production of Shrek The Musical at Theatre Royal Brighton from Wednesday, February 16-Saturday, February 19 (tickets from the venue).

Worthing’s Michael Burnie will be directing: “It is going to be great. When the audience see it, they are going to be taken away from everything and it is just such a beautiful story. The ogre gets the girl, and it’s the kind of story that people need right now. The set is beautiful. The costumes are beautiful

“When people think about it as a fairy tale, they think that it is like a panto but it isn’t. When you get to know it, it has got a really strong story and the characters are brilliant and the message is great. And at the end I think everyone will be up and dancing to I’m A Believer!

“The show should have happened in August 21 but it didn’t. We knew that if we had not started around Easter last year then August wouldn’t happen. We knew we had to have face to face auditions and obviously also rehearsals but we were not allowed to have face to face until July which was just too late. So it should have been August and that would have been a good time because we wanted a school holiday.

“We looked at dates but we couldn’t do Christmas because they were booked up at the Theatre Royal and the next slot was February half-term and we jumped at that. It is a good time and I just think that if we had delayed much longer then it would have been Easter or into the summer and that’s a long time to keep something on hold. The trouble is theatres get booked up so early and it’s difficult to find a full week.”

But despite all the difficulties, they never contemplated ditching the idea: “Even though everything was going on, we were just so determined that we would do it, just like every panto and all the West End shows. Everyone was so determined to make it work. We were so excited when we got the rights for it. They only released the rights to ten companies so when we got them it’s a really big thing for us and we just didn’t want to say let’s forget it and do something else.

“We had the auditions in July. We still did social distancing and auditions behind a Perspex screen. We were being really really careful how we did that and then we had August off and then we started rehearsals in September knowing that at any time who knows what could happen. Every week has been a bit of a challenge. We were really worried at Christmas and especially into January when people were talking about perhaps having a two-week circuit breaker. If they had done that then perhaps we would have gone back to just having six people together and we would have tried to make that work but obviously that didn’t happen. But really we just didn’t talk about that at rehearsals. When you are in the rehearsal room you just don’t dwell on that and on what might happen. The rehearsal room is just like normal. We’re all being creative and trying to just get away from all the news on the radio and so on. You just don’t think about it or about what could happen. You just think that you will deal with whatever situation arises if it does arise!”

Understandably show week will be an emotional week: “You just hope that you get through it and that nothing goes wrong. I have always had understudies in the past but I have never invested as much time with them as I am doing now. Who knows what might happen but we’re just taking like this extra insurance for ourselves by making sure that everything is covered. We have worked hard to make sure that everybody knows what they’re doing and that all the parts are covered just in case there are problems.”

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