Buxton’s Christmas panto boasts a 6ft sausage

A new recruit has just joined the cast rehearsing Dick Whittington at Buxton Opera House.  He’s six foot tall, tanned and just loves being in the kitchen.

No, it’s not another wannabe Paul Hollywood.  The new arrival is a giant, inflatable sausage, custom made for this year’s pantomime.  This eye-popping special effect is needed for a comic cookery scene that goes disastrously wrong, but when CTP Pantomimes Company Stage Manager Vernon Marshal rang round hire firms trying to find a suitable prop, all the inflatables offered were too small.

“The sausage escapes from the oven during cooking and gradually gets bigger and bigger,” says writer/director Philip Dart. “It’s a traditional gag that always brings the house down, but the joke only works if the sausage is really big.  We didn’t want to disappoint audiences, so we decided to commission our own, custom-made version.”

Unfortunately, however, the commissioning process didn’t go as smoothly as Philip had hoped.  “The manufacturer sent us a picture when the inflatable was finished, but instead of looking like sausage that had just come out of the oven, it looked more like a hotdog.  We had to ask them to paint it again to make it look as real as possible.”

The end result is a 2 metre long British banger that promises to make a real impact when it emerges from the stage ‘oven’.   It’s just one of the hilarious comedy scenes audiences can expect when they book for Dick Whittington, starring James Holmes (‘Clive’ from the BBC comedy series Miranda) and Gabrielle Green (‘Katrina’ from CBBC’s award-winning drama series Wolfblood).

Dick Whittington is here 8 – 30 December.

Tickets are priced at £19.50- £23. Discounts are available.

To buy tickets contact Buxton Opera House Box Office, Tel: 01298 72190 or visit: www.buxtonoperahouse.org.uk