5 Questions With... Snow White!
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a family festive show at Salisbury Playhouse!
Wiltshire Creative is ready to inject a little sparkle and magic into the festive season with Snow White and the Happy Ever After Beauty Salon from 3rd December.
This retelling of the classic story whisks audiences off to a magical 1950s fairytale wonderland, where young apprentice Snow is working hard in her Aunt Trish’s Beauty Salon.
Rehearsals for the show are well underway but Snow White - Consuela Rolle – and Artistic Director Gareth Machin have taken time out to chat to Experience Salisbury about the upcoming show for our 5 Questions With.... feature:
Consuela Rice and the cast of Snow White and the Happy Ever After Beauty Salon
Consuela, you are playing the iconic role of Snow White, but with a modern twist, tell us more about this exciting character:
Consuela: She starts off very traditional but then as we move through the story she becomes more human in a way. Wouldn’t you say....
Gareth: Definitely. She starts off as a Princess with people judging her on the way she looks, then as the story unfolds she discovers new skills, new talents, new things that she didn’t realise that she could do and becomes the heroine of her own story.
It’s been a terrible few years for theatre, how does it feel making a return and injecting fun back into Christmas?!
Consuela: It's brilliant. It feels great. Being away from what you love you’re always going to feel deflated, like you’re not doing what you love, so being back and at Christmas is so special because this is the time for families to get together. We feel like a family! Doing this at Christmas is the perfect time.
Why should Salisbury families come to see this show this Christmas?
Gareth: It’s a big, fun, colourful, bright piece of storytelling. Lots of laughter lots of music, lots of dancing. It’s got all the elements of the brilliant elements the pantomime has, but we’ve taken this classic story and found a new way of telling it. There’s lots that is familiar but lots of twists and new characters. But mainly, we just want to give people a great night out!
Jake Mitchell who plays Federico, and Gareth Machin during rehearsals
How important was it to make sure the Christmas show went ahead this year?
Gareth: Really important because it has been a difficult couple of years and I think it's important to remind everyone that they have a producing theatre in the heart of the community. We make everything here, we build all the sets here, all the actors come here to rehearse and make the show, so I think we’re really lucky Salisbury has this resource and we haven’t been able to do much over the last few years. It means we can create a show specifically for this audience, this city. I think, over the years we’ve built up a good reputation for really high-quality Christmas shows and we want to let people know we’re still here and remind people what a great night out you can have when you experience a live event.
What’s your favourite thing about Christmas?
Consuela: The presents! I love being gifted things.... I’m joking!! Really, you know when you get to Christmas there’s a feeling in the air. It’s like family want to be together, you see people you haven’t seen in a while. And then you’ve got this brilliant show! It is a beautiful show. I would want to come and see it if I wasn’t in it!
Snow White and the Happy Ever After Beauty Salon can be seen at Salisbury Playhouse from 3rd to 31st December.