Sticky Tape, Big Laughs and One Moody Trapdoor: A Night With Fordbridge’s Panto-Makers

The tea urn is doing better business than the box office. It is a Tuesday night in November, and inside a Fordbridge church hall the air smells of emulsion paint, hairspray and the faintly alarming warmth of a rubber chicken that has been in a prop box since 2019. Rehearsal is meant to have started ten minutes ago. It has not.

This is the final stretch for Fordbridge Amateur Dramatics, whose December pantomime is now close enough to make the committee speak in slightly clipped tones about ticket numbers. On stage, a retired geography teacher is being helped into a wig of such splendid excess that two people are required to keep it steady. Near the piano, a greengrocer from the market is practising a villainous laugh that keeps turning into a cough. And somewhere under the stage, a trapdoor is refusing to behave.

A small company with a very long to-do list

Fordbridge Amateur Dramatics is not a slick operation, and it would be the first to say so. It is a volunteer company of about thirty people, though only a dozen or so are here tonight. The rest will appear closer to opening night, when sets need painting, programmes need folding and someone has to remember where the spare fairy wings were left last year.

Rehearsals began in September, twice a week, in a hall hired at a rate that makes the treasurer wince. There are scripts to license, insurance to renew, lights to borrow and a panto cow costume that is currently living in a member’s spare bedroom. The company survives on ticket sales, a raffle, programme advertising from local businesses and the kind of quiet generosity that never makes it into a press release.

Tonight’s run-through is for Jack and the Beanstalk, though the version on stage is still a little fluid. A scene that should take four minutes has taken eleven. The beanstalk, represented for now by a length of green fabric, has collapsed twice. The dame, played by a retired teacher called Margery, ad-libs a line about the state of the High Street and gets the biggest laugh of the evening.

The trapdoor has opinions

The trapdoor is the company’s great unreliable character. It is supposed to provide a modest bit of stage magic: a puff of smoke, a disappearance, a satisfying clunk. In practice, it provides anxiety. Last week it dropped early. The week before, it refused to open at all. Tonight it is making a noise like a kettle being slowly annoyed.

A teenager in a very good approximation of a principal boy’s boots is standing nearby, listening to a stagehand explain that the trick is to ‘commit to the step’. She nods with the patience of someone who has been in four Fordbridge pantos and knows that commitment is only half the battle. The other half is gaffer tape.

The rubber chicken, meanwhile, has been promoted from background prop to scene-stealer. It has seen things, apparently. It has been waved during a wedding scene, dropped from a balcony and, on one legendary occasion, used to keep a door open. Tonight it is being tested as a visual gag. It works. The cast laugh, then remember they are meant to be rehearsing.

Borrowed coats and a rail of other people’s clothes

There is no costume department, only a rail near the back of the hall and a group chat titled ‘Wardrobe SOS’. Margery’s dame outfit is part borrowed, part charity-shop find and part sewn by a neighbour who used to teach textiles. The villain’s coat came from a member’s father, who has not yet been told it is being worn on stage.

This is how small-town theatre works. A shopkeeper lends a hat. A parent with a van collects a set piece. A retired joiner turns up on a Sunday to fix a frame that was definitely not built to hold any weight. The company has a small grant this year, but most of what appears on stage has been assembled from favours, leftovers and the Fordbridge instinct to keep useful things in a shed.

It is easy to be sentimental about that. The committee is not. It knows that tickets must sell, that the hall must be warm, that audiences have plenty of choices in December. A panto is a tradition, but it is also a night out with a budget. The company has kept ticket prices moderate, added a matinee, and put posters in the library, the bakery and the launderette. The rest is word of mouth.

Why the silly bits matter

When the run-through finally reaches its ending, the cast gather in a loose circle. There is a note about projection, a request for someone to bring a proper torch, and a reminder that the raffle prizes need collecting. Then the tea urn is switched off, the trapdoor is wedged shut with a folded programme, and everyone steps out into the cold.

Fordbridge’s panto will not be reviewed by anyone important. It will be watched by grandparents, school friends, neighbours and at least one person who has come mainly for the interval ice cream. That is the point. It is a few hours of daft, warm, local magic made by people who have day jobs and full lives and still turn up on a Tuesday to argue with a rubber chicken.

If you go, clap loudly. Somewhere behind the curtain, someone in borrowed boots will be trying to remember whether the trapdoor is supposed to open now.