Ryano s Panto in the Depot

TE radio and television personality Gerry Ryan is going to be in a pantomime in the New Year. Whew! It feels so good to write those words down, I think I ll do it again. RTE radio and television personality Gerry Ryan is going to be in a pantomime in the New Year. I ve finally managed to say it twice without Stuart Clark doing his impression of the office wit Oh no he isn t! every time the words come out. Oh yes he is, Stuart.
It s true though. And why does it feel so good? Because Ryano is going to be treading the boards in the New Year in a show called Snow White (Sort Of) which will be running in the Point Depot from January 3rd. It s also going to star Twink, Barney the dinosaur and boy band OTT. Still don t believe me? Well, the Ryanline is open and he s here himself to tell us all about it. Gerry?
It s true yeah, he chuckles in that deep voice so familiar to us all. Harry Crosbie has always harboured this ambition to become a theatrical impresario and, for the last couple of years, he s always held aside a fortnight at Christmas in the hope that he would. You know, instead of standing at the sidelines and watching productions come in and make money and go through the whole process that he s become so familiar with watching, he really wanted to get involved in one himself. Not that he needed the money by any stretch of the imagination!
He d already been approached by Twink, who had had some overtures from an organisation in America who work with Barney: the biggest children s entertainer in the world today and the grosser of $43 million the great purple one. And while Harry may not have known much about Barney at the time, I think he understands figures and balance sheets pretty quickly and he reckoned this might be a runner. So basically he came to me and asked my advice. I said I d love to be involved. Then he asked me would I like to be an investor and I said I would because I ve never done something like that before. And at that point we started putting together the team.
It s kind of a dream team considering this is a country with such a small population, he continues. I mean, Denis Desmond, Ireland s premier promoter is there. And Willie O Reilly who s worked with me on The Gerry Ryan Show for the last decade is there as well. And Adele (Twink) of course brought her multifaceted skill toolbox to the whole thing she s the scriptwriter, artistic producer, performer, you name it! It s limitless, the number of things she can do. And I m in there as an associate producer and an investor.
TONGUE-IN-CHEEK
Ryan wasn t let off that lightly however. It wasn t long before he was asked to put his mouth where his money was. Well, I think the feeling was we re not letting yer man Ryan away with just standing on the sidelines and so I landed a part in it as well, he laughs. It s quite an interesting part as well, I play the celestial wizard. I think I should point out that I m not the love interest!
Seeing as the show is loosely based around the story of Sleeping Beauty, do you now regret cutting off your ponytail? You might have landed the part of the handsome prince if you d kept it!
No, but I think they were a bit worried that I might grow the beard again, he grins. We re actually designing the make-up for the whole thing at the moment and that s quite exciting. At one stage during some of the make-up tests I looked like a mixture between Miley from Glenroe and the Vulcan from Star Trek: The Next Generation!
What s your character s name?
I m Captain Ryano, the intergalactic wizard, he declares proudly. I dispense my celestial wisdom to Adele s character.
As you might have guessed at this stage, Sleeping Beauty (Sort Of) isn t going to be a conventional sort of pantomime. What we re trying to do basically is take the panto format and give it a bit of a rock & roll feel, Ryan explains. It s a huge lighting rig, a huge sound rig and it s all being done on a large scale. I mean, you re talking a 4,500 seat theatre. We just thought, let s give the kids something they can relate to . And what they can actually relate to is concerts, that s what they understand now. They don t really understand a two-and-a-half-hour long variety show which stops every five minutes and drops the curtain and has somebody out front telling political jokes. I don t think they can relate to that or understand that. And I don t think they want it either.
So what we thought we d do is halve the time of the thing and make it go 20 times faster and make it much more spectacular. We brought in the Vanettis, who re illusionists extraordinaire. And all the entrances and exits in the show are going to be controlled by the illusionists. So it s gonna be full of large scale David Copperfield effects and some of the stuff is just mindblowing.
Is your character going to be based on your real life personality or do you actually have to act in the show?
Oh, I ll be acting, yes, he insists. I mean, if anybody thinks my real character has any dimensions of a celestial wizard then I thank them for the compliment, but it doesn t. It ll be very tongue-in-cheek acting though, because I m 40 years of age now and I know my strong points and my weak points. I don t think I ll be posing any threat to Pierce Brosnan or Patrick Bergin or anyone like that. I ll just be having a lot of fun with the character.
FEMALE FOLLOWERS
He may know the limits of his own talents but Gerry Ryan s admiration for his highly versatile co-star Twink knows no bounds. Adele s a very dynamic character, he enthuses. If you re a weakwilled person you d be very quickly overwhelmed by her. She s an extraordinary person, very gifted. I think that she s been underestimated in the productions that she s worked in before and her skills and contribution have gone unrecognised a lot of the time.
She s no pussycat, she s no walkover! If you re gonna have an argument with Adele, she states her case in a very robust way and if you don t watch yourself she ll win by two faults and a submission, you know. So this is a tremendously talented woman and this is her opportunity to show the rest of the world that maybe many of those successful productions she was in before had a lot more to do with her talents than people had perhaps realised.
And what s the Ryanline on Over The Top, the aptly-named boy band who ll also be appearing in the show?
Well, there s an example of the kind of skill I might bring to the production, he says. I sat down months ago and said that we had to have a Boyzone dimension to the show. And Boyzone are kind of unattainable at the moment and that was pretty easy to figure out last year. So I said we had to get the up and coming band, the next Boyzone. And OTT looked like they were beginning to happen about 6 or 7 months ago. I know somebody involved in their management team and so we just took a gamble that it would happen for them. And that s a real gamble because we had to sign them up 9 months ago. We were predicting that they d have a hit single this Christmas, which luckily they have! But showbusiness is such a hit and miss thing if OTT had disappeared off the face of the earth we would have had this boy band under contract and we wouldn t have known what to do with them.
Despite the scorn heaped upon boy bands by serious music critics, Ryan sees them as being as valid a form of musical entertainment as anybody else. Then again, he s hardly like to slag them off now, is he?
I reckon if you look back on what Phil Spector created in the late 50 s and early 60 s, you re looking at exactly the same thing, he insists. In those days, record companies put all their acts on tour in one package and that s no different from things we have today like the Smash Hits Roadshow. So I don t think boy bands are any different from the likes of The Tams or any of those people. They re basically entertainment units. And I think that they re as legitimate in terms of musical entertainment as anything since Tin Pan Alley.
Do you think that their numerous female followers will be a problem?
Well, it has to be said that when you re dealing with people like OTT or Boyzone you do tend to have large numbers of young women who get very excited at the very mention of their name, he smiles, but that s all part of the vibe really and I presume that the appropriate precautions will be taken in The Point to protect these delicate young men.
And is Captain Ryano, the celestial wizard, likely to attract many groupies himself?
I don t think I ll have any groupies. I might have me wife coming down to collect me on occasion, but I d say that ll be it. Should I run myself down by saying that? (Pauses thoughtfully). Yes, I think it s fair enough to say there will be no groupies for Gerry Ryan!
Oh well, you can t have everything.
(Oh yes you can! Stuart Clark). n