Panto Pandemonium for Chobham pupils at Olympic village school

All 200 primary kids had a part in Chobham Academy’s first-ever panto at their new school in the former Olympic Athletes’ Village in east London.

They put on ‘Panto Pandemonium’ for a combined audience of 500 secondary pupils and parents in two performances yesterday and Tuesday.

Out of the 200 youngsters on stage emerge four characters who have to travel through Pantoland to retrieve three special objects for the Good Fairy which have had their magic snatched away by the Wicket Witch.

It’s a daunting task, but somehow the four manage to rescue the Golden Goose from Jack and the Beanstalk and find the Glass Slipper that Cindarella had dropped in her Midnight flight from Prince Charming, before heading into Alladin’s Cave to recover the Genie’s Lamp. They defeat the Wicket Witch and restore the magic artefacts that no children’s fairy tales could exist without.

“It was something different, better than a traditional panto,” said the school’s performing arts teacher Emma Warsop. “The kids had lots of lines to perform and rehearsed for weeks, but they loved it.”

She directed the stage production with year 5 teacher Ben Shephard. Other teachers helped out. So did parents, with one Year 5 dad even designing the costumes.

Good Fairy was played by Pia Cameron, Wicked Witch by Charity Wymer, Jack by Thomas Drew and the Ugly Sisters by Aaron Tam and Daniyal Saunders to cheering from the audience.

Chobham Academy opened appropriately in Cheering Lane in September at the East Neighbourhood in what was the 2012 athletes’ village.