Sleeping Beauty, the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society?s pantomime, opens tonight at City Hall.

Writer and director Carol Birch said the panto will follow the usual ?Sleeping Beauty? lines, but it will have a bit of a twist. Ms Birch, who also wrote for ?Famous for Fifteen Minutes? and ?24 Hours to Curtain?, said she spent time at French?s, in London, with Adrienne Hintz, looking for a suitable script of ?Sleeping Beauty? and could find nothing.

Ms Birch said this led her to write her own and after six months she had a script and several months later it is hitting the stage. She said: ?People always say when do you find time, but I work during my lunchtime and I put my little shingle out and no one would talk to me during that time.

?It?s amazing how much work I got done in one hour every day. I didn?t write any of it at home, because if I got home, I think, oh, I?ll get something to eat, something to drink, watch the tele (TV) or get a good book, then you make any excuse not to write.?

?So once I start I am okay. If I got to that point where I had left it for a couple of days then I?d just read it through again and the minute I read it again the juices would start flowing and I was able to carry on.

?I would not say to myself that I was going to write today, but to simply say I am going to read it.?

She said she did extensive research of folk tales and was amazed at how many times and in how many countries the name Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty or Alorha) came up.

Ms Birch said in the play she pulled from many popular television shows, like ?Absolutely Fabulous (Ab Fab)? and ?Dallas?, and recent films, like ?Harry Potter? and ?Lord of the Rings?.

?Kelvin Hastings Smith is Fairy Belfry, which is based on the ?Ab Fab? character Batsie, and Shawn Angiers acts as Fairy Nuff, who is based on Edema,? she said.

?We have Babble, who is the Good Fairy Saffron, and she is similar to the character in ?Ab Fab?.

?Plus we also have a bit of ?Harry Potter?, in the character of Dobby the House Elf who is always hitting himself, and there is the Wicked Fairy?s side kick called Gollum, from the Lord of the Rings.?

Ms Birch, it was the first time that Sleeping Beauty was being performed here and she said the crew were having fun performing in it. ?The play has pulled on all sorts of different strings, so everybody should see a little of something that they recognise,? she said. ?But the story for the kids is very much the same.

?The big problem is that she falls asleep and so do most of the cast for the whole show, so that was something that I had to get around and I had to take liberties there.

?Because our prince would be very old by then, so I had to introduce him much earlier on.?

She said the part of Prince Felix is being played by Jordan Michael Stovell.

?He is just delightful and he sings,? said Ms Birch. ?And the young lady, who is playing Sleeping Beauty, who is aptly called Briar Rose (Alorha) in the panto, is Christa Schweizer.?

The Fairy God Mothers called her Briar Rose when they hid her from the Wicked Witch, who wasn?t invited to the christening.

?So the bad witch curses Sleeping Beauty and said that she would prick her finger on an old spinning wheel and then she would die,? she said, ?But that?s when the Fairy God Mothers come in and they are able to change the curse so that she would just be asleep, rather than die.

?So they take her away to their little place in the woods and they look after her until she is 18.?

Ms Birch said at that time the Prince turns up and he falls instantly falls in love with her.

She said: ?It is really funny because I had to keep the action going because the whole castle goes to sleep, so I took a leaf out of the CBS 1980s drama ?Dallas?s? book, when someone comes back and it was all a dream.

?The Prince and Sleeping Beauty have a dream about one another and we have a fabulous dance sequence called ?The Dream?. It is a bit of a cross between a ballet and Cirque du Soleil.

?We have got wonderful dancers and they are either all at CedarBridge Academy or they were at CedarBridge because our choreographer Joanna Powell teaches there.?

Ms Birch said Ms Powell?s dancers were doing something very innovative and certainly very innovative for City Hall.

?They are doing something that no one has ever done before,? said Ms Birch.

?So there are some surprises as to what we do. They are wonderful kids and they are having so much fun and they?ve really gotten into it.

?Actually they are doing a lot, because in the past the chorus had to sing, dance and act and it is very rare that you find people that have triple talents and are able to do it all very well.

?It is also very difficult to do really good dance numbers and sing well. So we decided to change it this year and we have a singing chorus and they do all the acting, and they move about the stage and the dancers just dance. So Joanna has been able to do some really fabulous dance stuff with them and we don?t have to worry about them projecting their voices.

?There is a seen in the Inn and it is just weeping it up wild, the dancers are diving over benches, cartwheeling and all sorts of stuff. I am very impressed.?

She said all of the hard work was really is over now and they have a fabulous set designer Giles Campbell, who was formerly of Ridley College.

?He has built a really innovative set and it is like magic,? she said, ?And the staircase wraps around a big half circle castle. ?Everything revolves and becomes a different shape or scene although it is the same thing ? it is a multipurpose set. It is very clever.?

Ms Birch said all the fantastic costumes have been made by Barbara Jones.

?At the first fitting I was jumping for joy because it was exactly what I?d envisaged and it was even more than what I had asked for,? she said.

?And the Dames oh, my God, the costumes for the three of them are absolutely outrageous. They have several costume changes. She is very clever and they are absolutely stunning.?

Musical director James Burns has written all original music for the panto, she said.

?It is gorgeous,? she said. ?It is a cross between a Pantomime and a Broadway show. It very much has that feeling.

?I can?t stop singing it after hearing it for the first time ? the next day and I was walking around humming it. We are going to video it, but we are going to try and get into a studio to try and record the music as well.

?I was saying that people are going to listen to this and they are going to want to have a copy of the music, because it is really good.?

Julie Hastings Smith, who is also a sculptress, is the show?s producer and Ms Birch said: ?She has sculpted me in this ? always making sure I am where I should be.?

Ms Birch?s interest in theatre began when she was a little girl who used theatrics to get her sibling into trouble.

?I can remember my teacher putting me on the desk to sing and I always had this tiny body and a big voice,? she said.

?I had an older brother and I blame him for the theatrics more than anything.

?So that is my life and I have been here for 27 or 28 years, longer than I ever lived in Staffordshire, England. It was really lucky that I met someone who was a member of BMDS.

?I mean I?d have gone there anyway, but someone said they were going there to audition for a Christmas Pantomime Cinderella and I ended up by getting involved.

?You don?t have to be good on stage to get involved, there is loads to do backstage. I?ve worked in just about every job there is to do backstage from hair to sound to lights of which I must say has helped in doing a big show like this because I know what can be done, or what we are capable of or not.

?I think that I have worked backstage with most of the people that are in the show and it is really nice because they have come out of the woodwork to help. And I called a few favours of a lot of members that haven?t done a show for a few years. They have come out in droves to help.?

One of her plays ?Just Reward? was done at the Alumni Theatre, in Toronto.

?I went up there to see it and it was so exciting,? she said.

She said along with all of her other experience another Pantomime helped prepare her for this one.

?A couple of years ago we did ?Aladdin? here and Jonathan Owen came to do the pantomime, but unfortunately he couldn?t stay for the whole run and he had to go back,? she said, ?So I took over for him for the last two or three weeks and I took it through City Hall and onto production.

?So I had a good taste of it, but this is even better for me because I got to organise it from the very beginning.?

Sleeping Beauty opens tonight at City Hall Theatre and runs until December 18.

They have three matinees performances on December 11, 12 and 18. Doors open for the evening shows at 7.30 p.m. Also please note that there is no evening performance on December 12. Tickets are $25 each and can be purchased from www.bmds.bm or at the Box Office.