Stage Buddha is too big for door

A statue of Buddha built for a musical turned out to be so big that a partition wall had to be taken down to get it out of the door.

The 5m (16ft) gold-coloured figure could not be freed from the Drill Hall in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion.

Technicians also realised a normal lorry was too small to get it to the Aberystwyth Arts Centre for the performance of The King and I.

They had to call in a crane to lift it onto a bigger lorry.

The arts centre is staging the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, set within the royal palace of Siam, to mark its 25th anniversary.

The technical team were preparing the set in the community hall in the seafront Ceredigion town.

A spokeswoman said they were "dismayed to discover the Buddha was too large to fit out of the hall door.

"The team now face the challenge of adapting part of the Drill Hall partition wall in order to extract the Buddha.

"This is not however the end of difficulties the team face. They must also overcome the problem of transporting the huge gold statue up the hill to the arts centre.

"The statue is too large to be transported using a standard lorry as was originally planned."

The Buddha was being put onto a lorry for the trip up the hill to arts centre on the university campus.

Arts centre technical manager Nick Bache said: "We are very grateful to Travis Perkins for helping us move the statue up the hill and there will be a lot of relieved faces all round once the Buddha is safely installed on the stage ready for the show!"

The King and I will be staged at Aberystwyth Arts Centre from Thursday, 23 July to Saturday, 29 August.

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