Welcome to the official web site of the Cromer & Sheringham Amateur Operatic & Dramatic Society.

The World Famous Cromer Pier - home of our main musical We hope you will find it interesting and informative. There's details about our history, previous productions, forthcoming shows and how to contact us. We always warmly welcome new members who wish to take part in our shows, whether as singers, dancers, actors, or all three!

If, however, you don't want to be on stage, but would like to be involved, there are hundreds of jobs to be done behind the scenes. We build and paint our own sets so if you're a budding carpenter, painter or just good with your hands, or if prefer helping with costumes or organising publicity, in fact, whatever your talent, we can make use of it!

A warm welcome and one hundred friends await you!Alternatively, to keep in touch with what we're up to, and to be among the first to know what's coming up, why not become a Vice-President? You'll receive priority booking for all our productions and our bi-monthly newsletter, "Just A Minim". So do get in touch.

The final curtain has come down on our most recent production

Saturday 24th to Saturday 31st May 2008

Cromer Pier Pavilion Theatre

The Ringmaster invites you to "The Greatest Show on Earth"

Well, after an emotional last night, it's all over and what a week we had!

Nine performances have played to excellent houses despite the typical Bank Holiday weather, although we enjoyed a wonderful sunny day for our final matinee and evening performances. But for those who braved the elements for that stroll along the pier to the theatre, we hope they found much to warm and cheer them once the band struck up!

A huge thank you to all the technical team for the work they did to make sure the show looked as fantastic as it did. This really was a show like no other, a colourful circus spectacular, and was certainly a departure for us from the traditional musical, and whilst it proved a huge challenge both artistically and technically, the company and all those involved be it front of house or back stage, have had a ball! (a juggling one of course!)

So a huge thank you to our audiences, without whom of course we would have all felt rather silly; to all those who helped in any way to bring the show to life; to our wonderful orchestra, this year hidden behind the scenes under the musical direction of Geoff Davidson; of course to our Director Jeremy Tustin (we hope we did him proud!) and our 2 fantastic Assistant Directors - Nona Gray and Robin Taylor - who never gave up and overcame every obstacle thrown at them -with mostly good humour and great spirit.

We seldom like to single out cast members as every show is very much an ensemble piece, but special mention this year has to go to Nick Bird, our own Mr P.T.Barnum. Nick has worked tirelessly for six months for this demanding role and has displayed tremendous commitment and talent in making the part his own. Thank you Nick for doing such a great job for us and for being such a nice bloke!

Lastly, we are thrilled that by the generosity of our audiences throughout the week, we have raised approximately £2000 for our chosen charity, Sheringham Woodfields School (for children with special needs) which will make a huge contribution to their efforts to buy a minibus. So a huge thankyou!!

You can see what the local press have said about the show further down this page and photos from the production can now be viewed in our photo gallery.

Eastern Daily Press Monday 26^th May 2008

Actors juggle tricky show with panache

Staging a circus on the end of the pier and asking “am dram” actors to learn juggling, uni-cycling and tightrope walking as well as their lines, songs and dance steps is a high-risk strategy. But, without the aid of a safety net, the Cromer and Sheringham Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society has leapt at that daring trapeze – and grabbed it with both hands.
This is a show which relies on celebrating Phineas Taylor Barnum’s thirst for colour and spectacle, and demands a lot from the whole cast, but two in particular.Nick Bird in the exhausting, exhaustive title role is hardly off stage, leaping from scene to scene and song to song, witty monologue to circus skill with breathless verve and professionalism – though probably stronger at the machine-gun-worded patter songs than the melodic ballads.
He gets right under the skin of a character whose showbiz pizzazz resonates a little with the late Richard Condon who played a big role in reviving the show venue. But he also plumbs the pathos of being bereaved from his long-suffering but adoring wife Charity, played sublimely by Amanda Howell. Armed with a sweet singing voice and a majestic stage presence, she captures the down-to-earth woman who can out-“flim flam” her Prince of Humbug. The other singing gold star goes to Janette Davidson, whose operatic background has the Cromer Pier Pavilion Swedish Nightingale soaring.
The rest of the cast is a non-stop kaleidoscope of cameos and colourful circus characters from clowns and jugglers to strongmen and acrobats – along with freak-show novelties such as General Tom Thumb, whose size is cleverly highlighted by surrounding him with people on stilts. Some of the chorus numbers, when the voices, costumes and choreography came to the boil – such as One Brick At A Time and Black and White – were outstanding.
But there were moments when the inevitable dropped juggling balls and clubs, some slightly muddled mass movement on the stage and not-quite-on-cue lighting was a bit of a distraction from the songs – whose clever words need full focus and clarity.
Overall however, this brave venture is a triumph.
Barnum managed to complete his first-night tightrope walk without falling off, to earn rapturous applause. And so indeed, in their own way, did the rest of the cast.

Richard Batson

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We were delighted to hand over a cheque for £500 to our chosen charity, Sheringham Woodfields School, on our gala opening night.

The school caters for pupils from 2 to 19 years with severe or complex learning difficulties. It was recently awarded "outstanding" status by Ofsted inspectors, and all monies raised and generously donated by our audiences throughout the week will go towards the cost of a minibus. Our audiences have added a further £1682 to the Society contribution by throwing their loose change in collection buckets as they left the theatre. So total donations of £2182. THANK YOU!

WHAT'S NEXT???

Well no sooner does the curtain come down on one show, rehearsals get underway for the next- Alan Bennett's hilarious farce Habeas Corpus. It takes to the Sheringham Little Theatre stage in October and auditions have come and gone and the cast are already getting to grips with it under the expert direction of Simon Thompson, who makes his debut with us. The play is well-know as one of Bennett's most popular comedies, first performed at London's Lyric Theatre in May 1973, to much critical acclaim, with Alec Guinness and Margaret Courtenay in leading roles.

After that and into 2009, we present Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train, again at the Little Theatre running from Wednesday 11th to Saturday 14th February (which for the first time for us at the Little Theatre includes a matinee on the Saturday). Many of you will know Arnold Ridley more familiarly as the gentle Private Godfrey in Dad's Army. Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch and Kathleen Harrison starred in the 1941 film. The story concerns a group of mismatched train passengers who end up getting stranded at a lonely country railway station called Fal Vale. The next train to Truro is not for another nine hours and to make matters worse, the weather is terrible. They soon learn of a local tale of mystery and fear concerning a phantom train that is sometimes heard and seen rushing down the track.The train carries the dead passengers, victims of a train crash that happened many years previously.

We welcome yet another new director for us -Janet Hignett- but no stranger to CSODS as Janet has appeared on stage in many past shows. She has in particular been a regular cast member of our previous plays and played leading roles in a number of them and has a wealth of experience to bring to her directing role. We wish her well in this new departure for her.

Our main musical production at the Cromer Pier Pavilion Theatre for 2009 is that classic and much loved My Fair Lady. Based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, the show's 1956 Broadway production was a smash hit. Opening on March 15,1956, in New York, and starring of course Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews and Stanley Holloway, it ran for 2717 performances, setting a new record for the longest run of any major theatre production in history. It was then followed by a hit London production, the film, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical".

We last did the show back in 1989, so after twenty years it is certainly one we must repeat. Of course both the score and script are as good as you will find in any musical and then of course there's that wonderful score. Our director will also be making her debut. Chrissie Robertson has directed for us in the past for our pantomine a few years ago in Holt, and for a couple of our Autumn productions including The Wizard of Oz. More recently, she was Assistant Director to Jeremy Tustin for Annie in 2007. She has of course also been on stage in many of our productions including Barnum earlier this year and we are delighted she has agreed to take on our big musical production for 2009.

And finally for now, thinking even further ahead, Hazel Taylor, makes a welcome retun to directing for us , when we present Arthur Miller's The Crucible, at the Sheringham Little Theatre in the Autumn next year. Hazel's most recent production for us, Of Mice and Men, received much critical acclaim and we look forward to presenting another thought provoking and powerful piece of drama.

So plenty to keep us busy and to look forward to. We hope that our choices will prove popular with our audiences. They certainly provide a great deal of variety and hopefully continue to showcase the range and breadth of dramatic talent that North Norfolk has to offer.

Be sure to bookmark this page in your "favourites" to keep up to date with all that the Society is up to. And thank you for your interest and support.

Website Editor: Andrew Payne