“Freya [Dare] was one of the baddies last year, so I thought I’d let her be a goody this year. The year before she was the understudy covering almost all the roles and she’s amazing. She’s our choreographer as well.

“Freya works with arts care a lot; she runs My Moves which is a disability dance group meeting here and other places as well. She’s got her own theatre company called Forest Friends Theatre which makes really gorgeous children’s shows that usually have an environmental message. With that company she normally performs outdoors so she’s really good at gently controlling the crowd. She’s so talented and such a joy!

“When I was thinking about Rapunzel, I was thinking ‘what do I want Freya to be? Do I want her to be a lobster? An octopus? And then I kind of settled on a puffin, so she was in last week having a full body cast made for her costume.

“Lloyd [Grayshon], again has been in the last two here. He was the Genie in Aladdin a little while back and is a panto veteran. Jess [Dyas], who’s the baddy, she’s a really experienced musical theatre performer and I think she’s ready to let loose on panto!

“All of them have done panto in some shape or form. Holly [Mayhew], when she was at Pembrokeshire College before she went off to drama school, played the dame! Enough make-up and a big wig, and anything is possible! I think she’s more used to playing those comedic roles rather than a princess, but Rapunzel in this, she’s up for an adventure; she’s not just locked away in the tower feeling sorry for herself.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what Holly does with that, because she’s naturally funny and she brings that out in Rapunzel as well.”

Chelsey has written the script for Rapunzel and is directing it too.

“Sometimes when you get a script, particularly for panto, you’re reading it and going ‘I know that there will be a really specific way that they did this, but that’s not actually in the script’, so it means I’m solving a lot of those problems as I’m writing it.

“Also, because I know the team here, I will go ‘can we have this thing popping out of a trap door’ and I can write all those things in. I do a draft and then, once we’ve casted it, I go back and rewrite bits for the specific people.

“Whenever something makes me laugh - on telly, in a book, in a film, I’ll make note of the joke if it’s something I think I could use in panto.

“Tim [Howe], who is our Senior Manager - Youth and Community, is a panto mega-fan and was in lots of pantos. He’s the first person the script goes to. He reads it and gives me lots of feedback and lots of jokes. He’s the person who comes into rehearsals and I’m going, ‘I this funny? I’ve lost all perspective!’

“Tim ran the sea monster competition as well, and this year we were fortunate to work with the Arts Society West Wales who secured some funding so he has run a series of workshops in schools to create the sea monster. It’s a real gift to have him here. I don’t think he’ll be making it to the stage this year [last year he was a stand-in dame] but you never know!

“It’s a real team effort, that’s what I love about the Torch, and part of why we all enjoy it for all the way through November-December because everyone feels invested in how it’s going to turn out.

“Kevin Jenkins is back as our designer. He’s a panto stalwart. Here we go down a semi-traditional route with panto design: it’s lots of cloths that fly in and out, which allows things to move very quickly.

“How do we represent the lighthouse? I think there are three different lighthouses in this: a mini one that grows, then we’ve got the lighthouse from outside and then obviously the lighthouse inside where Rapunzel is. Just up the road we’ve got our workshop and Sam has been busy building [for the panto] as soon as Turn of the Screw was up and running.

“We have a brilliant team of freelance scenic artists who do all the painting.

“Kevin does all the costumes as well and Louise Sturley coordinates the making of them and the fitting, and the taking them from the hand drawing to reality. Some of his costumes are so ridiculous. There’s a couple of catsuits in there, some nautical-themed outfits for the dame.

“We pick a colour palette and a theme each year: Rapunzel is purples and blues and lovely bright yellows. It’s a lot of work to figure out the cloth system as we only have so many bars that we can fly in and out with those cloths on. Kevin has to do a really detailed plan and sometimes I have to rewrite the script so the physical thing can work.

“It’s very traditional that the goodies always come on from the left and the baddies come on from the right… and we stick to some of those things within the tradition.

“That’s what I love about Kevin’s designs: there’s enough of that tradition there whilst also keeping it relevant for 2025. And because we have that in-house team who are great at building physical things, we tend to go down that route of ‘if we can make it, let’s make it.’

“So there’s a boat, there’s the sea monster, there’s other fish and sea creatures who pop up, there’s a big tangle of Rapunzel’s hair…”

“It’s the highlight of the year. For most theatres, their Christmas show is the main event. So you want to get it right. So many people come to see it; it might be the only thing that they see here in the whole year.”

“In the autumn when we go from the autumn show to the panto there’s always that couple of weeks when nobody knows what day of the week it is… but it all comes together in the end.

“I think it’s a really beautiful design; the costumes are great - getting to see Freya dressed up as a puffin - it’s going to be so joyful.

“And then the poor stage management team, there’s a big long list of props that they need to go and find: things for the hairdresser, silly things for slapstick routines like a giant butterfly net, a big ladder…

“James Williams has written all the songs and the music. It has always been a Torch tradition that they are original songs, inspired by pop songs, that go with the script. Then Sarah Benbow [Pembrokeshire Music Service; Bella Voce Choir], our musical director - she is just a walking ray of sunshine! - comes in and teaches the songs to the actors and make sure they’re really confident with them.

“I’ve heard a couple of them and they are so good! James is really good at writing earworms… there’s still a song from Sleeping Beauty that I will just randomly be singing. My first year, having the Beast disco dancing was never something that I imagined, but James wrote this really amazing disco tune!

“We’ve got some excellent singers in the cast this year. So I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of that music to see how it all comes together.”

“It’s fun for us, that we get to be really silly for a couple of weeks and hopefully we’ll make people laugh and smile. If they leave humming the songs as they go, that’s a big win.

“We take being silly very seriously.”

Rapunzel will feature at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire from Saturday, December 6 to Sunday, December 28. There will be a Relaxed Environment Performance on Saturday, December 13 at 2pm, and a BSL Interpreted Performance with Liz May on Tuesday, December 16, 6pm.

Visit the website, www.torchtheatre.co.uk, for further details or call the Box Office on 01646 695267.