Crawley kicks off its 2022 panto countdown

This year’s show is The All New Adventures Of Peter Pan (Friday, December 9-Monday, January 2) – and Richard Franks is looking forward to something like (he’s slightly lost count) his seventh successive Crawley panto.

“Yes, I am back despite popular demand!” he laughs. “But I just love it here. I actually live in Kent which is an hour and a half away but it's definitely worth the drive. Crawley has got a very special place in my heart and it's just a lovely place to be. The Hawth always put forward an amazing panto and the staff here are always just very friendly and lovely. It is a great way of spending Christmas.”

And there are definitely advantages to being established in a venue: “I think people start to recognise you and you can build on that from year to year. They kind of know what to expect from you and you don't have to introduce yourself quite so much.”

Joining him is Rita Simons – best known for her role as Roxy Mitchell in BBC’s EastEnders and her time on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here in 2018. Rita is relishing the prospect of being Crawley's first female Captain Hook, the perfect way of being precisely the kind of villain Rita so loves being.

“This is my seventh panto, I think, and it's the first time that I don't have to work in fishnet tights and a corset!

“I'm always the baddie. It is just so much more fun. I tried to be the goodie once and it was the most boring panto of my life. It was Aladdin and it was just really really boring. I'm a baddie through and through. I think the fact that I am so hyper is perfect for the baddie role and I can be quite scary when I want to be! I could never be a Cinderella. I've always loved the baddies and actually can be quite deranged. It's about relying on instinct. There's no philosophy to the way I play it and it's great.

“It is the one job in the year when you can really go for it. When you're doing a lot of musical theatre and theatre and plays and so on, you're very much doing what the director wants you to do or if you're in a big West End show you are doing what previous people have done but panto is great because it's the one show when you can just really let rip!”

For Karim Zeroual, who takes the title role of Peter Pan, the Hawth will be his very first panto ever

Best known for anchoring CBBC and reaching the final of Strictly Come Dancing in 2019 and then going on to dance in the Strictly Come Dancing Live Tour, Karim said: “I have never done panto before and I just thought that it would be so much fun to do after the past couple of years that everybody has had. I've done Strictly and lots of other shows so I just thought it was time to do panto.

“I've met the cast and everybody seems really lovely and everybody is just going to make it great fun but I know that I'm going to make it hard for myself. I want to do dancing and tricks and really performing just to show what I can do. And I'm really excited to be bringing my own spin on it. I have not completely thought it all out yet but I just now know I will because of the kind of person I am. I'm a street dancer, I'm a performer, this is the 21st century... you've got to bring something to it, haven't you!

Tickets are available at hawth.co.uk or by calling The Hawth Box Office (10am-4pm, Monday to Friday) on 01293 553636.