Community theatre isn't the first thing most people associate with the Algarve, but one amateur group has been quietly running for longer than some of the region's golf resorts. The Algarveans Theatre Group is marking 35 years of staging shows in the far south of Portugal, and they're marking the anniversary the way they started: with a pantomime. Alice in Wonderland, directed by Frank Remiatte, Shelley Danca and Shirley Devlin, opens in Lagoa this November.
The group began modestly in 1991, when a newspaper advert brought together a dozen or so British expats — among them founders Jerry and Hazel Lane, Lloyd Delderfield and Jenny Grainer. Early rehearsals happened in living rooms and around a pool in Lagoa, and the first show, Puss in Boots, was performed on a foot-high platform at the International School in Porches. Founding member Alison Greening, still with the group, recalls the pre-mobile era that made such clubs essential: waiting lists of a decade for a phone line, hour-long waits for an international call, and no UK television. For homesick expatriates, a winter panto wasn't a quaint tradition — it was a lifeline.
They outgrew the school hall quickly. By the mid-1990s the company was selling out the Lagos auditorium, where panto runs drew more than 1,200 ticket-buyers across five performances, with members each obliged to shift at least ten tickets. Every backdrop, costume and prop was made in-house — the group once rented a warehouse near Lagos to store sets, and famously had to repaint a shredded Cinderella backdrop overnight when a storm hit and the council moved the show forward a week.
Today The Algarveans are a self-funding non-profit with a far broader repertoire than dames and pantomime horses. Past productions include thrillers like Gaslight and Wait Until Dark, serious drama such as Kindertransport and Whose Life is it Anyway?, and musicals from The Wizard of Oz to Sister Act. Their most recent show, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, featured live musicians on stage. Twenty-two pantos have been mounted since that first Puss in Boots.
For travellers, this is a genuinely local experience most visitors never find. The Algarve's winter season is full of retired golfers and quiet beaches, and an English-language panto in a Portuguese town auditorium — heckling encouraged — is a fun evening out whether you're an expat, a long-stay snowbird or just passing through. Ticket details for the November run of Alice in Wonderland should appear on the group's website soon.
Story via Portugal Resident.
