| pinocchio_audio_description_programme_notes_goh_2025.docx |
Pinocchio Audio Description Programme notes GOH 2025
Welcome to Northern Ireland’s biggest pantomime - The Adventures of Pinocchio in the Grand Opera House Belfast.
Belfast’s much-loved panto Dame, May McFettridge, leads the cast as Mrs Geppetto in her record-breaking 35th Grand Opera House pantomime season. May is joined by Belfast panto favourites Paddy Jenkins, as Jiminy Cricket, and comedian Adam C Booth in the title role of Pinocchio.
After her standout performance as Captain Hook in last year’s panto, Jolene O’Hara returns to play the villain Stromboli. Making her Grand Opera House panto debut is Philippa O’Hara, Jolene’s sister, who plays The Fox. Together, the two have performed all over the world, both as individual artists as well as their hugely successful duo, The O’Hara Sisters.
Completing the line-up are Jayme-Lee Zanoncelli, and Maeve Byrne. Jayme-Lee, as The Blue Faerie last appeared on the Grand Opera House stage as Columbia in The Rocky Horror Show. and Maeve who plays Kitty the Cat has credits including the UK tour of Grease and Kiss Me Kate at the Lyric.
Sets
The stage is surrounded at the front top and sides by tall wooden effect beams that are initially lit up blue but change colour throughout the performance. The wooden frames are repeated three more times towards the back of the stage emphasising the depth of the space.
On the stage floor there are projections of stars and lights throughout and the floor has been made to look like broad bare floorboards with knots in them. The backing drop screen on the stage also has stars projected onto it.
In the auditorium there are two very large disco balls that spin and send dots of light around the space.
Hanging from the ceiling and over the centre of the stage there's a large 3D sign that says Pinocchio, each letter is lit up in either red, green or blue and there's a wood effect look to the letters. The letters flash and alternate their colours at the end of the first act and at the end of the show.
Above the Pinocchio sign and in the auditorium there are large blue stars hanging from the ceiling that light up.
Across the top wooden beam above the stage there are toys from May Gepetto’s workshop. There are toy soldiers at either end and from left to right, a whale, a model of Pinocchio, a horse pulling a chariot, some wooden block letters, a drum, a train set, a jack in the box, an abacus, a plane and a sailboat.
At the beginning of the panto a large blue book is slid onto the middle of the stage-its about 8 feet tall and 15 feet wide when it's opened. The cover reads, ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ in gold lettering. Two of the toys open up the book to reveal the inside pages and then images and text are projected onto the open blank pages.
The text is added just before the words are sung-encouraging the audience to sing along like it's a karaoke.
In Belfastia where Pinocchio lives, a lot of the action takes place in the middle of the town. Belfastia reflects 19th century Tuscany when the original story was set. The buildings look like cartoons and are all a little wonky.
On the left and right sides of the street there are little wooden framed houses, lush trees above them and in the distance, painted onto the back wall, some rolling hills. There is a small wooden well with a tiled roof in the centre of the street. On the left there’s a shop front and a sign for ‘Gino’s Pizzeria’ and on the right a sign for the ‘school house’.
The “Toy Box of Truth” is a wooden faced prop that’s painted like a big wooden chest with a big keyhole on the front of it. It’s about 7 feet wide and about 5 and a half feet tall. It’s wheeled on and the characters stand in front of it.
The Blue Fairy's School room is a painted backdrop that features the interior of a wood built school with four wooden slatted double windows and a cuckoo clock on the back wall. Beneath the clock there is a small black board with lines written ‘ I must not tell lies’ repeated 6 times. There are some coat hooks on the right of the room and there are some desks with open books on them, a book case and two ink pots with quills sticking out of them.
In the room itself there are three wooden school benches arranged in a crescent on the food in front of the backdrop.
There is a plane that features at roughly half way through the performance. It has a propeller on the front, lights on the tips of each wing and a light on the top of the back tail rudder.
Stromboli has a marionette theatre cart that reads ‘The Great Stromboli’ on the front of it. It’s a wooden framed wagon that has marionette puppets hanging up inside it and is ornately decorated with gold carved rosettes along each side.
Stromboli’s Ship is created by a dual staircase wooden bridge at the back of the space. There are staircases on the left and the right that double back and lead into the centre of the ornate old ship. There is a crest with an Italian flag and an anchor on it positioned in the middle of the staircase. There are two milk churns with ‘Dale Farm’ written on them in each corner of the ship deck too.
Monstro the Giant Whale is depicted by a painted backdrop close to the front of the stage. The whale is breaching the sea, it’s about 15 feet tall and has a huge mouth that’s about 10 feet tall. The inside of the mouth is a curtain that raises up allowing the characters to escape out of the whale. Inside the mouth there’s a huge tongue and tonsils.
Fantasy Island is depicted by a bright neon sign at the back of the space, it reads Fantasy Island in a circus style font and there’s a blue neon light behind it.
Costumes
Pinocchio wears a blue hat with an orange feather in it. He has a white shirt with a yellow waistcoat, blue trousers and tall orange socks pulled up to his knees. He has an orange bow tie and wears blue trainers. Pinocchio at times has an extra long nose that grows outwards away from his face.
Mrs May Geppetto wears a red and yellow polkadot hoop skirt dress. It has a red and white striped bow at the waist. May has a red polkadot bonnet on top of her bright red wig that has two curly buns on either side of her head.
Jimeney Cricket, green glitter top hat with a green glitter tail coat with long ruffle cuffed sleeves and green glitter trousers. The tail coat has points in the shoulders that stand up like a crickets legs and his top hat has two antenna coming out of the brim. He carries a green glittering umbrella.
The Great Stromboli wears a long shimmering black coat with silver embellished pointed shoulders. The coat has a purple lining inside it. She wears a black top hat that has a purple ribbon around the base of it and a very long purple feather sticking out of the side.
Kitty the Cat has huge fluffy lilac ears and a patchwork floor length dress in shades of pink and purple. Her dress is brought in at the waist with a large silver belt that features fish bone embellishments. Kitty has a long, thick and fluffy lilac tail coming from the back of her dress that goes all the way down to the floor.
Phyllis the Fox wears a long red coat made out of crushed velvet and gold tassels, it’s a bit of a jumble, she wears fur trimmed orange and white striped socks underneath a fur trim and scrappy looking underskirt. She has a huge fluffy orange and white fox tail poking out from the back of her jacket and she wears big fluffy ears on the top of her head. On top of her head she has a little black top hat and she carries a cane with her.
Both felines have their faces painted with little black noses.
The Blue faerie wears a purple cloak, a purple bodice and a silver skirt. She wears a decadent silver sparkling crown and carries a silver wand that has a star at the top of it. On her back she has delicate looking shimmering wings and dress and crown are embellished with shiny blue gems.
The ensemble cast are all wearing very vibrant outfits throughout and have quite a few costume changes.
In the first scene they are dressed as lifesize versions of children’s toys. There’s a jack in the box, a clown, a teddy, a ballerina, a toy soldier, little miss muffet, raggedy ann and a mad hatter.
In the second scene, dressed as Belfastians the ensemble are wearing 19th century inspired outfits. The men are wearing puffed sleeve shirts, waistcoats and trousers which are all woven together with visible seams. They wear baker boy caps on their heads. The women wear tea dresses with ruffled underskirts and apron fronts. They wear frilly flat lace fascinators on their heads.
In their third scene, they are wearing the puppet costumes of Stromboli’s puppet theatre. Their outfits are all multicoloured like marionettes, with a repeating diamond pattern across all items on their outfits. The women are wearing short ruffled bodies with tights and the men are wearing ruffled sleeved jackets with baggy trousers. The women wear curly short wigs under pointy hats and the men have straight hair wigs that look like straw that they wear under top hats.
The fourth costume change sees them wearing blue sparkle sailor outfits. The women are wearing short one-piece sailor suits with double breasted gold buttons on the front and white lapels. They have blue sailor hats on their heads attached with chin straps. The men wear full suits with the same buttons and lapels and oversized sailor hats.
Pinocchio is joined by four other sailor puppets that he has attached to his front and back. They are all linked by rods at the hands and the feet, Pinocchio controls their movements with his own.
The ensemble become the Fantasy Island Dancers for their fifth costume change and they are dressed in purples and blues. The women wear short bodysuits with huge feather headdresses and hip feathers that point up into the air, the men are wearing black waistcoats and trousers with gold belts, gold wrist cuffs and gold headpieces
In the final sequence all the characters wear silver and blue versions of their earlier costumes, they are very extravagant and embellished with lots of sparkles. All of the costumes now have a baby blue and bright pink element to them. The ensemble ladies are wearing extravagant floor length gowns with enormous feathered headdresses and there are huge plumes of feathers like wings coming out of the back of their dresses. The men are in suits with long sparkling silver dress coats, top hats that have feathers poking out of the top, they are also wearing the feathered wings on their backs.
Phyllis the Fox and Kitty the Cat are wearing similar costumes to before but they’re now pink and blue. The great Stomboli wears a dramatic neon pink feather on the top of her hat rather than the black and purple she previously wore. Pinocchio wears a very dapper fancy suit and Jimminey Cricket is wearing a silver suit with feathered embellishments instead of green. May Gepetto is wearing a similar gown to her previous one, now more glamorous with a white fur trim.
to edit.
Welcome to Northern Ireland’s biggest pantomime - The Adventures of Pinocchio in the Grand Opera House Belfast.
Belfast’s much-loved panto Dame, May McFettridge, leads the cast as Mrs Geppetto in her record-breaking 35th Grand Opera House pantomime season. May is joined by Belfast panto favourites Paddy Jenkins, as Jiminy Cricket, and comedian Adam C Booth in the title role of Pinocchio.
After her standout performance as Captain Hook in last year’s panto, Jolene O’Hara returns to play the villain Stromboli. Making her Grand Opera House panto debut is Philippa O’Hara, Jolene’s sister, who plays The Fox. Together, the two have performed all over the world, both as individual artists as well as their hugely successful duo, The O’Hara Sisters.
Completing the line-up are Jayme-Lee Zanoncelli, and Maeve Byrne. Jayme-Lee, as The Blue Faerie last appeared on the Grand Opera House stage as Columbia in The Rocky Horror Show. and Maeve who plays Kitty the Cat has credits including the UK tour of Grease and Kiss Me Kate at the Lyric.
Sets
The stage is surrounded at the front top and sides by tall wooden effect beams that are initially lit up blue but change colour throughout the performance. The wooden frames are repeated three more times towards the back of the stage emphasising the depth of the space.
On the stage floor there are projections of stars and lights throughout and the floor has been made to look like broad bare floorboards with knots in them. The backing drop screen on the stage also has stars projected onto it.
In the auditorium there are two very large disco balls that spin and send dots of light around the space.
Hanging from the ceiling and over the centre of the stage there's a large 3D sign that says Pinocchio, each letter is lit up in either red, green or blue and there's a wood effect look to the letters. The letters flash and alternate their colours at the end of the first act and at the end of the show.
Above the Pinocchio sign and in the auditorium there are large blue stars hanging from the ceiling that light up.
Across the top wooden beam above the stage there are toys from May Gepetto’s workshop. There are toy soldiers at either end and from left to right, a whale, a model of Pinocchio, a horse pulling a chariot, some wooden block letters, a drum, a train set, a jack in the box, an abacus, a plane and a sailboat.
At the beginning of the panto a large blue book is slid onto the middle of the stage-its about 8 feet tall and 15 feet wide when it's opened. The cover reads, ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ in gold lettering. Two of the toys open up the book to reveal the inside pages and then images and text are projected onto the open blank pages.
The text is added just before the words are sung-encouraging the audience to sing along like it's a karaoke.
In Belfastia where Pinocchio lives, a lot of the action takes place in the middle of the town. Belfastia reflects 19th century Tuscany when the original story was set. The buildings look like cartoons and are all a little wonky.
On the left and right sides of the street there are little wooden framed houses, lush trees above them and in the distance, painted onto the back wall, some rolling hills. There is a small wooden well with a tiled roof in the centre of the street. On the left there’s a shop front and a sign for ‘Gino’s Pizzeria’ and on the right a sign for the ‘school house’.
The “Toy Box of Truth” is a wooden faced prop that’s painted like a big wooden chest with a big keyhole on the front of it. It’s about 7 feet wide and about 5 and a half feet tall. It’s wheeled on and the characters stand in front of it.
The Blue Fairy's School room is a painted backdrop that features the interior of a wood built school with four wooden slatted double windows and a cuckoo clock on the back wall. Beneath the clock there is a small black board with lines written ‘ I must not tell lies’ repeated 6 times. There are some coat hooks on the right of the room and there are some desks with open books on them, a book case and two ink pots with quills sticking out of them.
In the room itself there are three wooden school benches arranged in a crescent on the food in front of the backdrop.
There is a plane that features at roughly half way through the performance. It has a propeller on the front, lights on the tips of each wing and a light on the top of the back tail rudder.
Stromboli has a marionette theatre cart that reads ‘The Great Stromboli’ on the front of it. It’s a wooden framed wagon that has marionette puppets hanging up inside it and is ornately decorated with gold carved rosettes along each side.
Stromboli’s Ship is created by a dual staircase wooden bridge at the back of the space. There are staircases on the left and the right that double back and lead into the centre of the ornate old ship. There is a crest with an Italian flag and an anchor on it positioned in the middle of the staircase. There are two milk churns with ‘Dale Farm’ written on them in each corner of the ship deck too.
Monstro the Giant Whale is depicted by a painted backdrop close to the front of the stage. The whale is breaching the sea, it’s about 15 feet tall and has a huge mouth that’s about 10 feet tall. The inside of the mouth is a curtain that raises up allowing the characters to escape out of the whale. Inside the mouth there’s a huge tongue and tonsils.
Fantasy Island is depicted by a bright neon sign at the back of the space, it reads Fantasy Island in a circus style font and there’s a blue neon light behind it.
Costumes
Pinocchio wears a blue hat with an orange feather in it. He has a white shirt with a yellow waistcoat, blue trousers and tall orange socks pulled up to his knees. He has an orange bow tie and wears blue trainers. Pinocchio at times has an extra long nose that grows outwards away from his face.
Mrs May Geppetto wears a red and yellow polkadot hoop skirt dress. It has a red and white striped bow at the waist. May has a red polkadot bonnet on top of her bright red wig that has two curly buns on either side of her head.
Jimeney Cricket, green glitter top hat with a green glitter tail coat with long ruffle cuffed sleeves and green glitter trousers. The tail coat has points in the shoulders that stand up like a crickets legs and his top hat has two antenna coming out of the brim. He carries a green glittering umbrella.
The Great Stromboli wears a long shimmering black coat with silver embellished pointed shoulders. The coat has a purple lining inside it. She wears a black top hat that has a purple ribbon around the base of it and a very long purple feather sticking out of the side.
Kitty the Cat has huge fluffy lilac ears and a patchwork floor length dress in shades of pink and purple. Her dress is brought in at the waist with a large silver belt that features fish bone embellishments. Kitty has a long, thick and fluffy lilac tail coming from the back of her dress that goes all the way down to the floor.
Phyllis the Fox wears a long red coat made out of crushed velvet and gold tassels, it’s a bit of a jumble, she wears fur trimmed orange and white striped socks underneath a fur trim and scrappy looking underskirt. She has a huge fluffy orange and white fox tail poking out from the back of her jacket and she wears big fluffy ears on the top of her head. On top of her head she has a little black top hat and she carries a cane with her.
Both felines have their faces painted with little black noses.
The Blue faerie wears a purple cloak, a purple bodice and a silver skirt. She wears a decadent silver sparkling crown and carries a silver wand that has a star at the top of it. On her back she has delicate looking shimmering wings and dress and crown are embellished with shiny blue gems.
The ensemble cast are all wearing very vibrant outfits throughout and have quite a few costume changes.
In the first scene they are dressed as lifesize versions of children’s toys. There’s a jack in the box, a clown, a teddy, a ballerina, a toy soldier, little miss muffet, raggedy ann and a mad hatter.
In the second scene, dressed as Belfastians the ensemble are wearing 19th century inspired outfits. The men are wearing puffed sleeve shirts, waistcoats and trousers which are all woven together with visible seams. They wear baker boy caps on their heads. The women wear tea dresses with ruffled underskirts and apron fronts. They wear frilly flat lace fascinators on their heads.
In their third scene, they are wearing the puppet costumes of Stromboli’s puppet theatre. Their outfits are all multicoloured like marionettes, with a repeating diamond pattern across all items on their outfits. The women are wearing short ruffled bodies with tights and the men are wearing ruffled sleeved jackets with baggy trousers. The women wear curly short wigs under pointy hats and the men have straight hair wigs that look like straw that they wear under top hats.
The fourth costume change sees them wearing blue sparkle sailor outfits. The women are wearing short one-piece sailor suits with double breasted gold buttons on the front and white lapels. They have blue sailor hats on their heads attached with chin straps. The men wear full suits with the same buttons and lapels and oversized sailor hats.
Pinocchio is joined by four other sailor puppets that he has attached to his front and back. They are all linked by rods at the hands and the feet, Pinocchio controls their movements with his own.
The ensemble become the Fantasy Island Dancers for their fifth costume change and they are dressed in purples and blues. The women wear short bodysuits with huge feather headdresses and hip feathers that point up into the air, the men are wearing black waistcoats and trousers with gold belts, gold wrist cuffs and gold headpieces
In the final sequence all the characters wear silver and blue versions of their earlier costumes, they are very extravagant and embellished with lots of sparkles. All of the costumes now have a baby blue and bright pink element to them. The ensemble ladies are wearing extravagant floor length gowns with enormous feathered headdresses and there are huge plumes of feathers like wings coming out of the back of their dresses. The men are in suits with long sparkling silver dress coats, top hats that have feathers poking out of the top, they are also wearing the feathered wings on their backs.
Phyllis the Fox and Kitty the Cat are wearing similar costumes to before but they’re now pink and blue. The great Stomboli wears a dramatic neon pink feather on the top of her hat rather than the black and purple she previously wore. Pinocchio wears a very dapper fancy suit and Jimminey Cricket is wearing a silver suit with feathered embellishments instead of green. May Gepetto is wearing a similar gown to her previous one, now more glamorous with a white fur trim.
to edit.
