This year’s Christmas panto proved a roaring success for the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society (BMDS), in spite of a demoralising move from its traditional venue.

Housed this year in the Daylesford Theatre, instead of the usual Earl Cameron Theatre at City Hall, the panto gave the audience a more intimate setting — reflected in a sold-out run of shows.

“We were pretty much 100 percent the whole way through. We did very well this year,” said Jennifer Osmond, the BMDS vice president, who also played the character Evilena in this year’s performance of ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

Impressed with its success at the Daylesford, BMDS may even opt to keep the panto there in the year ahead — but only after a rigorous appraisal of what worked and what didn’t.

“The bottom line is that no decision has been made as of yet. We’re going to take every aspect into consideration,” said Ms Osmond.

Parking proved a challenge for some and there were empty seats even at fully-booked shows — which Ms Osmond admitted was “frustrating” given the overall high demand.

“We’re going to try and put something in place for that — it’s a smaller theatre, seats are limited, and we need some kind of arrangement for people to swap tickets if they can’t make it,” she said.

“There were sold out nights where we ended up with seats left empty. That’s a shame when you know there are people out there gagging for tickets.”

The smaller theatre took fewer than 3,000 guests — versus “in the vicinity of 4,400” for the City Hall venue.

But the drop in seats was offset by other savings afforded by the Daylesford.

There was a higher number of performances for ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and some actors and crew members found it “quite challenging to give three performances”, as they did on weekends this year.

“That was something we’ve never done before,” Ms Osmond said.

“At the end of the day, even with later performances, we were getting out earlier than we usually would. Even with the 8.30pm show, everybody was out by 10pm.”

The panto is aimed at a young audience, she said, and performers were keen to not to tire them out.

As BMDS assesses the latest show, its main concern is “whether the public was happy with it”, she added.

“For us it’s not about whether we made a lot of money at the Daylesford,” she said. “The panto is about children and families. Our serious consideration is whether people got to experience the panto.”

With that in mind, the society is keen to hear what people liked or thought could be improved.

Feedback on this year’s show is being collected through an online questionnaire, which can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/s/2WTJ9BN.