Children bring festive cheer with fantastic Christmas spectacular

Children bring festive cheer with fantastic Christmas spectacular

15 December 2021

THE Lodge in Castlewellan recently played host to the fantastic Dramarama charity Christmas show run by Dorans Academy of Speech and Drama, based at Ardilea between Clough and Dundrum.

Proceeds from the show were donated to Action for Children, supporting their services based in Downpatrick and reaching families throughout Co Down through their Secret Santa campaign.

Action for Children run over 20 services across Northern Ireland, helping children and young people to thrive, stepping in early so young people don’t have to reach crisis point. 

The Christmas show was enjoyed by parents, families and friends, who enjoyed watching children aged 3-17 display wonderful acting, singing and dancing in a variety feel-good entertainment for all.  

Delighted to finally be back on stage after such a long time were the Thespians with ‘Shrekful Christmas’, written by Michelle Dorans and inspired by the Thespians themselves. The cast included Shrek(played by Shea McGrath) and Fiona (Sarah Stranney), who gave strong performances.

Out on a test drive Santa’s 

head Elf (Imogen Anderson) and Rudolph (Clodagh O’Neill) find themselves stranded in an overwhelmingly green land of slime. Needing to find some joy to fly back home to Santa before Christmas is ruined, they don’t fancy their chances in the apparently miserable place that Christmas clearly forgot.

Little do they know that joy is never far away in this particular land with Shrek, Fiona, their children (Aobh Cahalane, Amy Brogan and Eimear Devlin), Donkey (Conor Crossett) and Gingerbread man (Grace Magee-Glavin). 

They had to watch out for the only slime not worth knowing is Lord Farquaard (Thomas Dorans), who tries to ruin Christmas for the whole world. But his loyal sidekick (Adam Dorans) takes a leap to the good side and helps save Christmas, as well as nabbing himself a new job in the North Pole!

The cute and adorable Ragamuffins were next up with two performances of Ralph the Reindeer. 

Poor old Rudolph had a cold — aaaatchoo! — leaving Santa with no-one to guide his sleigh until Ralph the Reindeer came along.

Ralph was eager for work and, keen to help, he ensured that the preparations continue for Christmas Eve. But not until the sleigh was laden with presents and ready to go did they all discover that Ralph couldn’t fly!

But Ralph and Rudolph worked together to solve the problem and they did indeed save the day in this great musical, which had the audience giggling and smiling throughout at the wonderful antics of the Christmassy cast.

In the first performance the cast was as follows: Ralph, Orlaith Miller; Santa, Caleb Cunningham; Rudolph, Rosa Fleming; reindeer, Max O’Brien, Ollie O’Brien and Merryn Small, elves, Evelyn Cousins, Molly Foster and Cara Goodall.

The cast for the second performance was: Ralph, Oisin McClean; Santa, Matthew Fitzpatrick; Rudolph, Laura Donaghey; reindeer, Abigail Graham, Leo Graham and Anya Hanlon; elves, Hayley Kennedy, Bella Murray, Aoife Clarke, Kurt McDonald and Oryn McCullough.

The finale to the afternoon show was the Scallywags’ performance of their play The Santa Interviews.

Santa (Aoife Devlin) needed a chief cookie supervisor, so he advertised the position nationwide and had some quite unexpected applicants. Most who turned up were quite unsuitable for the post for fairly obvious reasons. Aided by his elves Gimble (Niamh Watson) and Macy (John McClean), who both secretly also want the job, and, of course, with the ever watchful eye of Mrs Claus (Grace Craig) the series of unlikely candidates appeared for interview in turn.

First in was Prancer (Jessie McNabb) who was deemed unsuitable almost immediately due to her clunky hooves. Frosty (Annabelle Kane) appeared with quite a disastrous result as Santa’s toasty warm office saw him melt!

One of the more surprising applicants arrived next in the shape of Ebenezer Scrooge (Shannon Canavan). After he saw the errors of his ways, Scrooge found himself in need of a new job.  Having signed 51% of his company over to Cratchit, Tiny Tim ((Fynn McAleavy) has grown into a most demanding employer and was definitely not about to release Scrooge from his current position!

Scrooge was closely followed by Smeagol (Sofie Van Rein), who had the shortest interview of all as Galadriel, the Elf Princess Warrior (Phoebe Kane) was hot on her tail to drag him back to middle earth.

After all that it was hardly surprising that Santa refused to see anymore applicants and awarded Macy the promotion much to Gimble’s dismay. However, his dismay was short-lived as Santa gave the best Christmas present ever and promoted him to vice-president. And they all lived happily ever after — near enough!

Due to Covid risk mitigation the choral versers unfortunately could not be in The Lodge on the day, but they did record their Christmas verse and also helped raise much-needed funds for Action for Children.

Performing ‘A Gift for Santa’ were Ella Forristal, Ava McCarthy, Shannon Murray, Rhea McAuley, Felicity Stewart, Cara Goodall and Eimear Siddall.

‘Help Wanted by Timothy Tocher’ was performed by Orlaith Miller, Max Delaney, Mia Mackin, Ruadhan Small, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Max Norman, Nancy Tilly, Alix and Zara Middleton-Turner and Caiden Petticrew.

The fabulously entertaining ‘Pantomime Poem’ was performed by Carragh Ferris, Nat Skillen, Thomas Dorans, Isla Venney, Caoimhe Ferris, Dexter Williams and Jai Graham.

Michelle Dorans, who runs Dorans Academy, was delighted for the children and their wonderfully entertaining performances.

“You can’t help but just smile watching them,” she said. “They really all have progressed so much and to see them so confident and thoroughly 

enjoying the stage is just a delight for me.

“The audience were so entertained – there was a wonderful buzz in the air and to get that excitement back about performing publicly was magic – we have so missed it.

“It has been a pleasure to prepare the children for this special annual charity show and it has been much anticipated with Covid keeping us all from the stage for so long.”

Michelle continued: “All proceeds and money sponsored to the children is going to a wonderful charity which really changes the lives of young children. It truly is heartwarming to know that all their hard work will make a difference to other children the same ages as they are.

“I am absolutely overwhelmed with the generosity of our audience. Even with everything that is going on with the multitude of other fundraising events we still raised £1,744.26. 

“With all the proceeds going to Action for Children I’d like to thank all those who donated raffle prizes, helped out in any way with the show, or came along and watched and applauded. Your help, time and support is so very much appreciated. Keep safe and merry Christmas.”

Cheryl Brown, Fundraising Manager for Action for Children, said: 

“We’re so grateful to all at Dorans Academy of Speech and Drama for 

their brilliant fundraising efforts this festive season. We’re hugely grateful for the generosity of all those attended and donated to our Secret Santa campaign. 

“For most of us the festive season is a happy time. But there are children in our communities who face Christmas without food, warmth or love.

“We’re doing everything we can to change this and money raised goes towards helping vulnerable and disadvantaged children, often in desperate situations.”

She added: “Donating may seem like a small thing to do but it could make the world of difference to a child at Christmas.”

Action for Children are inviting members of the public to become a Secret Santa for some of the UK’s most vulnerable children. Visit iamsanta.org.uk/community or text CHILD to 70607* to find out how you can help.