5:16pm Tuesday 5th January 2010
By Peter Magill
A THEATRE staffed by volunteers in Pendle has been cast into the national spotlight as part of a major advertising campaign.
More than 130 actors, cameramen, technicians and support staff descended on the Pendle Hippodrome, Colne, for the two-day shoot for McDonald’s.
Scouts acting on behalf of the fast- food giant had picked the historic venue as the backdrop for a pantomime-themed promotion.
On stage during the clip, a panto dame, played by Mark Tristan Eccles, over-eggs the ‘it’s behind you’ routine in front of a packed crowd.
And as the fed-up members of the audience and the entire cast file out to their nearest takeaway, one fiesty granny sarcastically gives him what for.
A Pendle Hippodrome spokesman said: “They took two days to set up, and filmed over a full day.
“There were coaches, two double decker buses for catering, two equipment trucks and all kinds of paraphernalia parked outside the theatre to supply the cast, crew and extras.
“Inside the theatre, a full set had been installed together with the biggest and brightest lights ever seen on the stage.”
Once the action moves outside the auditorium, the exterior of another theatre, in Hyde, Tameside, was used to round off the advert.
Scaffolding has since appeared outside the Pendle theatre but Hippodrome bosses have been quick to point out that this was because the frontage needed repointing, and had nothing to do with the TV shoot.
The advert was the brainchild of London-based agency Leo Burnett and follows on from McDonald’s Steve McQueen and the Great Escape themed ad in 2008.
The venue also played host to Manchester-based Encore Theatre’s production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in December.
Run as a charitable company, the theatre dates from the beginning of the First World War.
It was reopened in 1986 after an eight-year campaign by enthusiasts to update the interior.
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