Panto villain Julia enjoying this year's year of freedom at the Kings

She says she is pretty confident that things will be back to normal for 2022 after all the traumas and upheavals of the past couple of pandemic years. Julia will be playing one of the wicked sisters in Cinderella, taking to the stage at the Kings Theatre in Southsea from December 2-31.

“This is my third time at the Kings. The first one was the dreaded pandemic year when we only got a couple of weeks in. That was 2020. We did a short but rewarding run but sadly we were cut short but I do think that we were one of the only theatres in the country that managed to get a panto out in any shape or form so it was huge kudos that we managed to do that. And then the following year it was the will-they-won’t-they year, but in the end we managed to end up doing the whole run but there were still lots of difficulties and there still had to be social distancing and things like that. And actually I got Covid at the end of the rehearsals so sadly I missed the first week of shows. It was really tough but life happens and we managed to do the run which was great. So this year we're just hoping that this is going to be the freedom year when everything is back to normal. I don't think this year is going to be any different to-pre pandemic. The only difference is going to be that the Kings has made sure that the panto is bigger and better than ever to make up for the years where we weren't able to do it quite as we wanted to do. The key thing is that we continue to be self-produced which makes a really big difference. What it means is that we have a lot more autonomy and we are able to do exactly what we want. They are very audience aware at the Kings and they know exactly what the audiences love in Pompey. There is an element that panto is panto is panto wherever you are but this is the Pompey panto and it's not called the Pompey panto for no reason. We know what Pompey audiences like and that's what we give them. There are lots of Pompey in-jokes and people love the fat bloke in a dress which is what they get with Jack as the Dame and there is a big element that it's exactly for Pompey.

“My career has been very varied. In the theatre I have done being predominantly musical theatre and I have generally played a variety of variously doomed women, people like Fantine and Eponine and Nancy but then again I'm trying to think of any women in musical theatre that aren’t actually doomed!” Julia’s first panto was in Brighton when she played the romantic lead: “But I really love playing the baddies which is what I'm doing here this time. I just love the humour of it and the fact that the kids love to hate you and boo you and they like to pretend that they're a little bit scared and they just love disliking you. You get so many lovely messages. This time I'm one of the two step sisters. We've got one male step sister and one female step sister so it's going to be an interesting dynamic.”