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Debbie Chazen, as Mother Hoodman, Gemma Barnett, as Little Red Riding Hood, and Josh Glanc as the Pig in the panto. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

When the curtain falls for the final time on Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig, Britain’s first professional Jewish pantomime, which ends on Sunday, the show will have been seen by more than 6,000 people, from ultra-Orthodox rabbis to LGBTQ+ groups.

It is a huge relief for Raymond Simonson, chief executive of JW3, the Jewish cultural and community centre in north London that staged the panto. “It was a gamble. We took something quintessentially British and stirred it up with Jewish culture in grandma’s chicken soup pot to see what would come out,” he said.