Exclusive: P&O Cruises has announced the creation of its own theatre company, employing more than 100 entertainers.
Called Headliners, it will present a range of productions on five of P&O’s six-ship fleet. In a break with previous practice, creative control will be handled in-house under head of entertainment Anthony Radford and production manager Steve Bee.
“This is the start of building an infrastructure to develop the entertainment provision we have on board - we’ve got to such a scale now that it makes sense for us to do that,” Radford told The Stage. “We’re trying to develop the size and scale of the productions we present and to introduce new technology to enable us to present the highest quality product. Having it under our direct control gives us the chance to do that.”
The umbrella company will exist as five stand-alone production teams, each assigned to a specific ship for a six-month period. Radford expects there to be “eight or nine shows per cruise and overall, 30 shows on view to our passengers across the fleet”. The fleet-wide organisation will be changed twice a year with 62 performers on contract at any one time.
Bee explained that Headliners would offer nearly 2,000 performances a year across the fleet.
Operating with what Radford describes as a “very significant” budget, it will perform in a range of on-board theatres capable of seating 500-800 passengers at a time.
“It’s not the by-gone age of lounge entertainment, they’re multi-million venues that have been equipped accordingly. Some even have full, computerised fly facilities. It’s in recognition of that that we present shows with sets, costumes, orchestras and so forth.”
While the majority of shows will be “musical theatre-based and in concert format”, Radford says that on the fleet’s longer-length cruises, “we also offer a number of plays, comedies and thrillers - when people are on-board for 80 days, they want a wider variety of entertainment. On standard two-week cruises, where entertainment is presented in a post-dinner situation, audiences want something easier.”
P&O is also building relationships with existing theatre producers. On a recent world cruise, the Ray Cooney company presented two full-length farces, while on their newly launched 3,000-berth ‘super-liner’ Ventura, an Andrew Lloyd Webber-based production has been licensed from the Really Useful Group and an abridged version of Saturday Night Fever from Robert Stigwood.
Creative talent involved in the new company includes choreographers Rob Wheeler, Scott Marshall and Ali Penteney, set designers Steve Howell and Peter Bull and costume designer Sue Simmerling.
A new P&O cruise liner enters the fleet in 2010.
• For more on working in cruise entertainment, see the special Cruising supplement in the print edition of The Stage this week (May 22 issue)
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