GENEVA AMATEUR OPERATIC SOCIETY PRESENTS
THE 2015 PANTOMIME
by Tim Perrin
Directed by Bill Heckel
Assisted by Liz Williams
Musical Director: Alan Robbins
THÉÂTRE DE MARENS
5 Route du Stand, 1260 NYON
Saturday, 14 November 2015 at 14h00 and 18h30
Sunday, 15 November at 14h00 and 18h30
Friday, 4 December at 20h00
Saturday, 5 December at 14h00 and 18h30 Sunday, 6 December at 14h00 and 18h30
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A WELCOME FROM THE GAOS CHAIRMAN
It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to our
2015 Christmas Pantomime
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
Please get comfortable in your seat for some seasonal family fun in this scintillating tale of magic, mystery and mischief. A story brimful of laughter, singing and dancing. And, of course, true love.
GAOS has been proudly presenting Christmas shows for most of the past forty years. Our archives of GAOS productions contain an awesome collection of pictures and information. For example, you might notice that our 1988 production, Peter Pan, had a certain Tim Berners-Lee in the cast! Check it out at our website: www.gaos.ch/Memories. Past shows include all the classics — some of them more than once — but also original works, like Rumpelstiltskin. The original script is by Tim Perrin, and the director is Bill Heckel. The musical director is Alan Robbins, and the choreography team was headed by Karen Ball.
Our story takes place in the village of Pair-o’-Dice (geddit?), where King Avarus is searching for a bride for his son Prince Henry. Times are hard in Pair-o’-Dice and the King believes Dame Sloe’s claim that her daughter Prunella can spin gold from straw. Locked in a tower with a spinning wheel, Prunella is helped by a man who exacts an unusual promise from her. Then the tale takes a sinister turn ... I will tell you no more. Will our tale end Happily Ever After? I do hope so.
Our wonderful cast and crew have put together a magnificent show that we know will please and delight you. Live theatre is a challenge at all levels. We are able to maintain our high standards and longevity as a group thanks to many people — our members, our sister organization, the Geneva English Drama Society (GEDS), and our booking office, Theatre in English (TiE). For this production specifically, we are also grateful to the entire Théâtre de Marens team for their support and outstanding professionalism, and to all of our advertisers and sponsors for their generous support. They join all of us at GAOS in wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, our audience, without whom we would not exist. So now, please sit back, relax and indulge in a brief return to childhood, as we take you to that place which all the girls and boys, young and old, adore. The world of Fairy Tales.
Mike Sell, Chairman
If you would like to know more about our forthcoming productions or to express an opinion about our activities, please contact me at [email protected] Alternatively, just have a word with one of the many “Ask Me About GAOS” people at the theatre today.
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THE DIRECTORS
Tim Perrin (Co-Producer and Author) attended his first GAOS pantomime, Humbug, in 2001. It was his first pantomime ever — prior to that his idea of pantomime was silent gesturing. Since then, he has attended all but two GAOS pantomimes and other pantomimes in Basel and Copenhagen. Although American, he soon became hooked on this very British form of entertainment. In 2006, he wrote the rhyming couplets for Ali Baba and the FortyThieves and thereafter for a number of other pantomimes, including this year’s mini-pantomime, Sinbad. His first attempt at writing a pantomime — Humpty Dumpty in 2013 — was a bit scrambled and did not end up on the sunny side of the GAOS Committee’s table. When questioned about his disappointment, he replied “Omelette to believe they just didn’t get my yolks!” But bad puns and stories with odd twists will out, and his second attempt, Rumpelstiltskin, was accepted. He has come to realize that having a pantomime accepted is only the beginning of the daunting challenge of getting it onto the stage. He and Bill Heckel have been greatly assisted in this undertaking by an enthusiastic cast and production team and the invaluable guidance of Liz Williams.
Bill Heckel (Co-Producer and Director) is known primarily to GAOS audiences for his performances onstage, in
shows such as The Gondoliers, Oliver, Iolanthe, Follies,The Pro- ducers, Trial by Jury and last summer’s A Little Night Music.
Offstage, he served as Musical Director for Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves in 2006 and as the musical godparent to
three summer youth shows (Oklahoma!, West Side Story
and Hairspray). During this time he has faced a number of challenges — playing a singing elephant in Up the Empire, a dancing gorilla (in high heels, no less) in Cabaret, and a callow youth after hitting the 60-year mark (H.M.S Pina- fore) — but he thought the most daunting challenge was playing “Gertie, the Dame” (in high heels again) in last year’s pantomime, Once Upon A Time. But actually directing a show — and a pantomime to boot — takes the cake: it is the tightrope to end all tightropes,and when the script has been penned byone’s best friend, the stakes are that much higher! Fortunately, he and Tim have been blessed with an outstanding cast and phenomenal production team (with special thanks to Liz Williams, our own “fairy godmother”), all of whom have made what could have been a nightmare a dream come true.
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MUSICAL DIRECTOR AND BAND
ALAN ROBBINS — Musical Director
Alan was first and foremost an orchestral trumpeter in his early musical life. Whilst school contemporaries earned theirpocketmoneystacking shelves atthe local supermarket on a Saturday, he could usually be found in the theatre pit orchestras of various local operatic societies. However, he has also been known to torture pianos if they are left unlocked.
Career took precedence for many years, but Alan was occasionally moved to form traditional jazz bands. He was invariably leader, trumpeter, vocalist, arranger, promoter, head cook and bottle-washer, etc. Stock-in-trade work was generally the wedding circuit, although his band did once open a furniture megastore in conjunction with “Brian” from Coronation Street (at that time). “Brian” famously made a game but ill-advised attempt to join in the last chorus of The Saints Go Marching In!
Since arriving in Geneva in 1999,Alan has been involved with GAOS. For some years, he and both of his left feet were regularly to be glimpsed in the back row of the men’s chorus. Often he deftly combined this with minor roles (usually two lines or less) ... who could forget the thirty kilogramme (polystyrene) turkey he had to run on stage with in Humbug (2001)? Most recently, he was seen on stage, minus his beard and spray-painted gold, as the genie in Aladdin (2008). This was his biggest part to date with about ten lines ... unfortunately eight of them were: “Yes, oh master”.
Now on his fifth show as musical director for GAOS, Alan is pleased to be part of such a happy production. His previous outings were for Sleeping Beauty (2004), Alice in Won-
derland (2005), Snow White (2007) and Goldilocks and the Three Bears (2013).
THE BAND
Piano: WOLFGANG SCHÜTT Percussion: KIRBY BIVANS Flute: NINA MATTOCK
Double Bass/Electric Bass: MASSI LA MARCA
Trumpet: STEVE PAVIS
Clarinet/Alto Saxophone: PATRICE PIGUET
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CHOREOGRAPHERS
KAREN BALL
Karen is once again delighted to be part of the GAOS panto team.After having tested the role of co-director for last year’s panto Once Upon a Time, she is pleased to be able to support fellow new directors, Tim Perrin and Bill Heckel on this challenging but fulfilling journey. As always, she has had great pleasure working alongside the adult and kids cast and has also enjoyed the occasional trip out to the GAOS workshop for a spot of sunbathing and painting (oh, and great company!).Karen’s nextGAOS projectwill be children’s choreographerforthe 2016 spring
show Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. She hopes you enjoy our performance of Rumpelstilt-
skin as much as she has enjoyed working on it.
BINDU KAPUR
Bindu is American, Canadian, Swiss and has Indian origins. She first joined GAOS in 1997, appearing in Anything Goes and Guys & Dolls. After ten years overseas, Bindu returned to Switzerland and could not resist getting back on stage when she saw that GAOS was producing Chicago. Since then she has been involved in several GAOS productions, both on and off
stage, including Chicago, Cats, Cabaret and Once Upon a Time.
She is delighted to be part of the Rumpelstiltskin choreography team and thanks Karen, Bill and Tim for giving her the opportunity to try this new role. Bindu would also like to thank her husband, son and daughter, who are always supportive of her involvement in GAOS.
CHERYL ROONEY
Cheryl first joined her Dad in a GAOS show in 1979 (aged 6) as the little white rabbit in Goldilocks. This sparked her love of dance and shortly after she joined the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève, where she studied ballet, tap and modern dance. Over the years she progressed through the ranks of GAOS to the adult chorus, though she prefers dancing to singing. Since last year she has helped teach the children’s choreography with her sister-in-law, Karen, but says she still has much to learn. When not teaching children, Cheryl keeps herself busy nursing them!
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THE ORIGINS OF RUMPELSTILTSKIN
Chapter 25 of the 1594 edition of Johann Fischart’s Geschichtklitterung, a loose adaptation of François Rabelais’s Gargantua et Pantagruel, contains a list of children’s
games, among which figures “Rumpele stilt oder der Poppart”. A rumpele stilt was a kind
of poltergeist who made noise by rattling posts, rapping on planks and moving household objects. This was the source for Rumpelstilzchen, which was first printed
in 1812 in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) by the brothers Ja-
kob and Wilhelm Grimm. Rumpelstiltskin, as well as the oldest literary version of the story, Ricdin Ricdon from La Tour ténébreuse et les jours lumineux (1705) by Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon, is undoubtedly based on older folk tales.The Brothers Grimm did not travel around the country collecting fairy tales and legends, and the role of the “common people” was not very important. Rather, the Brothers Grimm relied on more than fifty contributors, most of whom came from Hesse and Westphalia and were young, well educated and well-off. In particular, the bourgeois families Wild and Hassenpflug were a source of many Grimm fairy tales, including Rumpelstiltskin.
In the 1812 edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, when the miller’s daughter guesses Rumpeltiltskin’s name, he runs away in anger and never comes back. In the 1857 edition, he drives his right foot deep into the ground, then seizes his left foot with both hands and tears himself in two. In the oral version collected by the Brothers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin flies out of the window on a cooking ladle.
Rumpelstiltskin can be interpreted as a cautionary tale about the consequences of lying, avarice (one of the seven deadly sins) and insincere promises made under duress. This is a problematical fairy story, in which none of the four characters is a truly good person: the miller puts his daughter’s life in jeopardy by bragging to the king; the king cares only about all the gold he can get from the miller’s daughter;the miller’s daughter — later the queen — never contradicts her father’s lie and gives in to all of Rumpelstiltskin’s demands; and Rumpelstiltskin, a dwarf with magical powers and rather unclear motives, comes to the rescue of the desperate girl but then demands that she give him her first-born child (true, he later offers her a chance to get out of her promise).
Rumpelstiltskin has had an enduring influence on psychoanalysis, literature, music, film and television. In this year’s pantomime, Rumpelstiltskin is no longer a dwarf but a young man, and the miller is now a milleress with a terrible secret. And Rumpelstiltskin’s final demand may be said to be twice as great as his demand in the Grimm story.
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RUMPELSTILTSKIN: GOLD COMFORT
King Avarus has decided to marry off his feckless son Prince Henry to a poor girl from Pair-o’-Dice, an impoverished village on the far reaches of the kingdom. Sophia Sloe, the local miller, wants her daughter Prunella to marry the Prince so that she, Sophia, can live a life of ease. Prunella isn’t too enthusiastic about the idea — that is, until she meets the Prince by chance and the two fall madly in love. Sophia tells the King that Prunella can spin straw into gold.
That very evening Prunella finds herself locked in a turret with a spinning wheel and six cartloads of straw. A mysterious young man suddenly appears and spins the straw into gold, asking only for a small token of her gratitude. The next morning, Sophia and her beau, Lorenzo the locksmith, arrive and free Prunella from the turret.
After a brief interlude of freedom, Prunella is apprehended by the King’s henchmen and taken back to the turret. Now she has to spin 12 cartloads of straw into gold by the next morning. Again, the strange young man helps her out: this time he asks for her ring. When he comes to her assistance for the third time, he makes Prunella promise to give him what she “first gives birth to” when she is Queen. Meanwhile, the King has decided that he — and not Henry — shall marry Prunella.
Walking in the evening in a forest, Sophia and Lorenzo discover Henry locked up in a hut and they set him free. Suspecting mischief, all three set out for the palace. As the King prepares to wed Prunella, Queen Cornucopia — who has been away on a training course — returns and prevents the marriage, transforming King Avarus into King Generus. The royals abdicate, and Henry and Prunella are crowned King and Queen.
A year later, Henry and Prunella arrive in the castle gardens with their newborn twins. The joyful mood is spoiled by the appearance of the mysterious man, who holds Prunella to her promise: she must give him her twins. When she despairs, he takes pity on her and grants her three days to guess his name.
