Our History
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Founded in 1977 by actor/producer IAN LISTON, The Hiss & Boo Company is one of the major providers of theatrical, Music Hall and Variety entertainment in the UK. The Company also have a burgeoning overseas market: in recent years they’ve paid many visits to the Middle East and other parts of the world where they provide a wide variety of entertainments: Hiss & Boo’s Best of Broadway Musicals, The Best of the British Musicals and Best of British Music Hall & Variety with their inimitable brand of comedy entertainment are always well received by audiences at home and overseas.
Apart from playing theatres large and small throughout the UK and overseas with a mixture of quality plays, concerts, shows for children and Music Hall, Variety and Comedy Shows, The Hiss & Boo Company have provided themed events, corporate entertainment and a wide variety of entertainment services for companies such as British Airways, Microsoft, Thomas Cook, The Tetley Pub Company, Barratt Homes, Rotary International, The London Docklands Development Corporation, ANZ Grindlays Bank, The British Council, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the DTI, The Ideal Home Exhibition and the British Overseas Trade Group.
The Hiss & Boo Company have also produced plays and musicals in London’s West End. These include Nunsense, Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, Corpse! by Gerald Moon, the award winning Groucho: A Life in Revue, Double Act and The Mr Men Musical.
These productions – together with many more – have also featured on Hiss & Boo’s UK national tours. Hiss & Boo shows have been seen in over 200 UK theatres and venues… and in 11 overseas countries.
Over the past ten years Hiss & Boo have been touring the RSC’s enormously popular Shakespeare Revue to venues large and small at home and overseas …and on the seas in various luxury, up-market cruise liners! They have also produced a revue in celebration of the British Countryside Come Rain, Come Shine featuring a large cast of actors from BBC radio’s The Archers.
New shows for 2006/7 include a further revival of The Shakespeare Revue and a brand new show, On the Grapevine – a wonderfully witty revue celebration of wine. Other Shows in preparation include VICARS IN A TWIST, THEATRICAL DIGS, LOVE etc. and a revival of Hiss & Boo’s hugely successful 1987 production with Welsh National Opera of DEAR IVOR – a celebration of the life of Ivor Novello.
The company regularly provide Music Hall and Variety shows as fundraisers for various Rotary organisations and national charities including The Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
The last few years have seen Hiss & Boo concentrating to a much greater extent on the production of top-notch pantomimes. They are all written afresh each year especially for the company by writers such as Ian Adams, Richard Gauntlett, Kate Edgar and Colin Wakefield and Roy Hudd. Thse top notch shows are now regular fixtures in the performance schedules of several major No. 1 touring theatres and regularly feature star name artistes such as Jeffrey Holland, Judy Buxton, Jane Tucker, Barnaby, Brian Hibbard, Peter Duncan, Isla St Clair, Rick Wakeman, Colin Baker, Fascinating Aida (Adele Anderson & Dillie Keane), Wayne Sleep and Jimmy Cricket.
Hiss & Boo commissioned Kate Edgar and Colin Wakefield to write new productions featuring a cast of actor/musicians of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots for The Theatre Royal Winchester and they continue to tour the ever-popular seasonal attraction Christmas Cat and the Pudding Pirates.
See our pantomimes section for current productions.
With the acquisition of a new scenery store and workshop in Oxfordshire future plans include even more pantomimes and the development of revue-type entertainments and quality plays for the touring circuit at home and overseas.
The company prides itself on the standard of its personal service… and the first class quality of its productions.