Park up, park up for cruel yule fun for all the family
IThe Horrible Christmas cast in performance (photos: Ian Tilton)
f you want alternative family fun that’s a little bit beastly this festive season, look no further than Birmingham Stage Company’s Horrible Christmas offering.
From December 11 at Chelmsford City Racecourse (4.30pm and 7pm) to January 3 2021 at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire (11am, 2pm and 5pm), the players will still perform in car parks across the nation.
Birmingham Stage Company has built up a strong reputation for its Christmas shows, but this year’s festive extravaganza is arguably its most ambitious yet – and it’s coming to a car park near you!
The company, set up in Birmingham 28 years ago, has developed its first car park Christmas show to ensure audiences can indulge in family fun in safety.
Horrible Christmas, based on Terry Deary’s book from the Horrible Histories series, will be performed on a portable stage and giant screens with audiences sitting
in their own cars and sound streamed directly onto their dashboard. And the idea is proving to be so popular that most of the dates have already sold out.
Shows will be played at venues in Newark, Coventry, Exeter, Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and many more venues.
The model was piloted by Birmingham Stage Company, working with Coalition Agency, over the summer when it toured another of its Horrible History shows, Barmy Britain, to car parks and racecourses in front of huge – but, crucially, socially distanced – audiences.
BSC actor/manager Neal Foster was eager to try the experiment, although he is the first to admit he wasn’t sure people would want to sit in their cars to watch a show.
“We’ve played Barmy Britain outside before but never like this and I had no feel for how a show being watched in a car would work. But it really does.
“What happens is you drive into the car park and park. You are looking at the stage which is actually a lorry cleverly disguised as a stage. There’s a huge video screen so you have a very clear view of the action and the sound comes directly through to your car.
“We did a dry run for all of our office staff the day before our opening for Barmy Britain and they were all incredibly positive and said it works fantastically well – you can hear clearly, you can see clearly.
“And what we found was that there are some advantages when you are seeing a play with your children.
“When you’re in the theatre you might want your child to be quiet so they don’t disturb anyone, but when they are just sitting in a car with you they can talk as much as they like, ask you questions, join in, they can eat as many sweets or crisp packets as they like. So, the experience of sitting in a car was in some ways easier.”
The tour was so successful BSC and Coalition Agency decided to tour a festive show.
And the company had just the production ... Horrible Christmas.
“The story was originally written by Terry Deary, the genius who has written all of the Horrible Histories books, and it’s just perfect for us to stage this year because it’s about a boy who’s trying to save Christmas,” says Neal.
“Sidney Claus is trying to destroy Christmas forever because he hates Christmas. He’s got a magic time machine and keeps going back in time to the pivotal moments that created Christmas as we know it today to try and destroy it.
“This young boy, Watson Williams, teams up with Shirley Holmes and they keep following Sidney Claus back in time to stop him”.
Horrible Christmas is a tried and tested production BSC has been performing at different venues for the past seven years. Although the production is being marketed under the banner of Car Park Panto, it is definitely a Christmas show rather than a pantomime.