"Once upon a time..."  So began the pantomime "Sleeping Beauty" at the Moonambel hall.

The words spoken by yours truly in an Irish accent while dressed as a frog.  This was my fifth appearance in a Steve Lane/Gwynnyth van den Bergen production with the ensemble cast that is starting to get quite a reputation around the district.  And for good reason.  The team all works incredibly hard and there is a wealth of talent that Steve and Gwyn manage to winkle out and polish up.

With evil witches (Salli Argall) and the three fairies, Fairy Floss (Jan Curtis), Fairy Nuff (Tanya Miles) and  Fairy Vazion (Ruth Searle) there was great banter and plenty of boos, hissess and "She's behind you" throughout the night.

And just to ensure a bit of gender balance in the magical stakes, the wizard (Graeme Akers) makes an appearance with the clownish "Boots" (Bernard Abadie) and myself in a musical interlude.

Of course you can't have Sleeping Beauty without, well, Sleeping Beauty.  The princess (Claire Farrell) in repose waiting the 100 years for her prince charming (Sanne Malkaer) made quite a sight.

And in true pantomime tradition we had our own Grand Dame, the queen Popsi Wopsi (Michael Matthews), whose comic monologue got the crowd going and fully immersed in the proceedings.

"On the day of the christening, the court were all busy..."   And you can't have a court without a king (Adrian van den Bergen) - centre stage.

In the wings we had Steve and Gwyn and Claire's brother Ben did a great job of promt/stage hand.

The entire proceedings were very well received and we even got a write up in a few local papers, along with Facebook and Twitter appearances.