The curtain rises on rough seas, a shipwreck, pirates, sailors, cannibals and stowaways.

They are all apart of the Robinson Crusoe pantomime, which opens tonight at City Hall.

The panto director is Jo Shane and she says that the audience can expect all sorts of silliness and interesting capers.

?It is full of goodies and baddies and this time it is full of pirates, sailors and cannibal islanders after Robinson gets cast away on this desert Island,? she said.

?Kelvin Hastings-Smith is the Dame. We always have to have a man that dresses as a woman and a woman that dressed as a man ? we have to keep that tradition alive. ?Nicole Burgess is playing Robinson Crusoe. There also has to be a love interest and Robinson has a girlfriend and she is being played by Sophie Pearson, who is a student at BHS ? she has a lovely singing voice. It is very nice to see her on stage.?

Every Christmas the Bermuda Music and Dramatic Society (BMDS) put on a pantomime to help raise funds for other productions through the year.

?Every year we select a few pantos to read, and there were four that we tried out, but we liked the sound of this one the best. ?You have to kind of do a new one. You can?t keep repeating Aladdin, and we haven?t done a Robinson Crusoe since 1978.

?And strange to say one of the cast members, Connie Dey, is appearing in this one, which is very nice.?

But this particular play was written by John Morley and be warned that it is not the same as the book written by Daniel Defoe back in 1721.

If they were sticking to the original then they would only have two characters ? Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, but in fact there is a cast of thousands on the Island.

?He is shipwrecked on an island, which is infested with cannibals and a cannibal queen,? she said, ?And he almost gets eaten by her.

?So, that is how we get a cast of thousands and of course a lot of people have stowed away on the ship that he leaves England on. It starts on the London docks and we are transported on to the island of Umumello, while being pursued by pirates.

?I hope it is not too blood thirsty and there is one big pirate fight, where Robinson Crusoe has to fight the pirate to win and some people are fighting with swords and others with sink plungers. Keeping the comedy alive.?

But even with all the fun and happenings, Mrs. Shane said sometimes you still can?t be too sure.

?It is difficult to know when you have been rehearsing this long to know whether it is funny anymore, as the jokes aren?t fresh anymore.

?But we had the children, who have been rehearsing off site, come in, and they were hooting and laughing so I think we might be onto something.

?Also people have asked is there a fairy, yes, there is a fairy; are they going to throw flour and water, yes, of course; and will there be a gorilla in the jungle, yes, yes there will be (laugh).

?You have to almost tick these things off otherwise people get upset. So, lots of slapstick and silliness.?

The production team has been dunned as the J-Team by the director. There is the producer Julie Hastings-Smith, choreographer Joanna Powell, and herself Jo Shane.

?Julie is producing this show and compared with a normal show that we do at Daylesford (Theatre), producing a show at City Hall, with so many characters and so many costumes, building and painting the set, getting the cast there on time ? she is just doing an amazing job.

?Because it wouldn?t be happening without her, she keeps it all together. She knows who to call, when to call them, who is supposed to be where, and she doesn?t take any nonsense from anybody. She keeps me in line too.

?Joanna has done some beautiful choreography and she has done quite a lot of work with the students. Many of them she knows from CedarBridge (Academy) because she teaches dance there. I really hadn?t seen what they were doing and then they came in over the weekend and showed us and it is beautiful.

?We find it easier because in the past for the chorus we used to try and find dancers that could sing or singers who could dance and it never really quite worked out, but now we try to have a good singing chorus and dancers who can really dance.

?So, we can do more exciting things and she has them jumping and swinging over their heads and the normal chorus member really doesn?t want to do that ? they are quite happy to sway from side to side.

?But I have seen her work with people on a play I directed a while back, The Legacy Falls, and that was the first time that I met her.

?She got handed a bunch of people that could sing and she pulled it together and they ended up doing some amazing stuff ? things they never thought they would. She is very clever.?

On the music front the panto has Robert Davidson, who is the musical director.

?We have some gorgeous music,? she said.

They were also fortunate to find set designers Elmer Midget and Michelle Pasquin.

?It is very colourful and we were incredibly lucky to get two of the very best set designers on the Island to do the sets this time ? Elmer is designing the hardware, and Michelle is painting the backdrops and this time there are five beautiful, beautiful backdrops.

?She is doing some gorgeous work and I know from her work at the Aquarium that she is great at doing botanicals. There is a jungle backdrop and she just can?t leave it alone ? it will never be finished.?

Londoner Mrs. Shane has never been far from the stage and as she said, ?usually on it?.

She became involved in theatre many years ago after spotting an ad to audition in her local newspaper in North London. At 12, he auditioned for the pantomime and still retains a soft spot for the art.

?After that I was absolutely hooked and it went from pantomime to things more serious,? she said. ?And I knew after that I wanted to go to college and study drama. So, when you see these little kids coming along for this pantomime, you know that you are sewing a seed for a lot of them.

?There are some incredibly talented children and I think we had 60 children audition for nine spots in the pantomime this time and it is heartbreaking to turn them away.

?You have to warn them in the beginning that although you are all here ? I am only going to want nine or ten of you, but of course there are tears. So, it is sad really that this is the only thing there really is for children.?

She trained as a drama teacher at Hereford College, but recently there is only one thing that she would change.

?I have been on the stage since I was very, very small and I have never really been off it,? she said. ?But next year, 2006, I plan to spend more time on the stage.?

The set will involve a host of different and exciting bits of fun, she said.

?Obviously there is a shipwreck and we are attempting to do it on the stage ? the ship breaks in two and with any luck it will be remarkable. They have built the ship in two parts and it sinks to the bottom of the sea.

?Doug Parker is doing the lighting and he?s being mentored by Annette Hallett. Doug has done a few shows and he worked with her on Cabaret. He is very keen and is a pleasure to work with.

?The sound is being done by Andrew Frith, special effects are being handled by Phillip McIntosh and his wife Holly is handling the props.

?The costumes have been divided up and we have split it between the wonderful Barbara Jones, who is handing the Dame (Kelvin Hastings Smith) wardrobe and he has about six or seven changes ? all very dramatic.

?But she (Ms Jones) is in Baby With the Bathwater, so we have found a number of other people who are willing to sew at home.

?This panto is quite convenient in that there are a lot of sailors, a lot of pirates and it is quite easy to put together a costume for a pirate without getting close to a sewing machine.?

But she has found that sometimes people do not know the history of pantomime.

?Because we have such a mixed cast of Bermudians, Canadians ? the English people all know what a panto is, but occasionally we have people who haven?t a clue what a panto is.

?And when you explain it it sounds absolutely ludicrous: ?Well you have this man that dresses up as a woman; and then you have this girl who dresses up as a man; and then marries another girl and she wears fishnet stockings and stilettos; and when people say, ?why??, we say ?Well that is the way it has always been and how it always will be?.

?The history behind panto is just fascinating. If you go back to the Victorians and if you go way back to Shakespeare?s time you would never have had a woman on the stage.

?But during the Victorian era the only time that you could have a woman on the stage is if she was playing a britches role, and she could show her legs, but if she was dressed as a woman she wouldn?t have been able to show her legs.?

All the rehearsing was going on in a little room upstairs at the BMDS and they were a little crammed for space.

?It all gets a bit exciting when a few things that have been rehearsed off site and the dancers have been rehearsing at CedarBridge Academy in the lovely dance studio with the choreographer and then all of a sudden we have to bring it all together ? so it is a bit of nail biting moment for me and as a director, you just hope that the decisions that you have made are the right ones and that it will come together.

?But everybody is having fun and that is what it is all about ? pantomime is fun. Although, we have to say that we take it all seriously because in Bermuda the pantomime is such a tradition and everybody has to take their child to see the pantomime. So, we don?t play at it ? we work very hard at getting it right.?

Robinson Crusoe: A Pantomime opens tonight at 7.30 p.m. at the City Hall Theatre and runs until December 17.

Matinee showings take place on December 10, 11, and 17 at 3 p.m. ( Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at the Daylesford Theatre between 5.30 p.m. - 7.30 p.m. weekdays or by ( 292-0848. They are also available one hour prior to show time at City Hall and by visiting www.bmds.bm.