Corny jokes, fairytale favourites and a wall of noise from the audience – pantomime plays for belly laughs, and don’t say it isn’t drama
Words: Libby Norman
Up and down the country, wigs are being sculpted, giant sateen skirts stitched, crowns and wands polished, while scripts are written and refined. Panto season is approaching – mainstay for regional theatres, still a hot ticket in London, and treasured by audiences who return year after year.
But try and explain pantomime to anyone not familiar with its traditions and you’ll struggle. The cross-dressing, the jokes on repeat, the line-up of fairytale characters mixing old plots with topical jokes. I mention this to Clive Rowe, Olivier Award winner, and a panto legend (greatest of all modern dames, many say). I suggest that panto is a bit weird. He thinks weird is a strong word – the wrong word.
“It may be a little bit peculiar to the UK,” he concedes. He’s right there, for panto is a largely homegrown tradition. The roots, most histories tell you, are in Italy’s commedia dell’arte, although you don’t have to be a theatre historian to spot echoes in Shakespeare’s comedies – or go further back to the Lord of Misrule, mummers and even mystery plays. Clive Rowe sees that historical mash-up, but says panto has its own distinct identity. “The vital components are comedy, good music, good dancing – entertainment for families, from the youngest to the oldest.”
Rowe is returning to Hackney Empire – one of the capital’s biggest hitters in panto productions. A familiar lead character there over many years, this time he’s in the director’s chair for Cinderella, featuring well-known talent and up-and comers supported by the theatre’s creative development programmes. It’s already selling out.
“It’s as difficult to do pantomime as it is doing other forms of theatre – and if people say it isn’t, they’re not doing it properly”
Andrew Pollard is another celebrated pantomime dame, and also an in-demand writer and director – hugely experienced in panto creation. He presided over the well-loved pantomime at Greenwich Theatre for 15 years. Now he’s back for his second year as writer and director of the King’s Head Theatre panto up in Islington, after his smash hit last year. Second time around, he’s delivering Jack and the Beanstalk. Once he’s steered that to the stage, he will don his wig and head north to be Dame Madeline Marzipan in the Victoria Theatre, Halifax production of Beauty and the Beast. For that show, he has just a week’s rehearsal time.
Like Clive Rowe, he is a huge believer in panto power – its ability to entertain everyone. “I think it’s a combination of the fairy stories, which kind of live in our DNA,” he says. “But the appeal of the panto is that we do this in its most simplistic form.” In other words, with pantomime, you know where you are – goodies meet baddies, and good always overcomes evil.
“Not only are the stories in our DNA, but nowadays panto is too. Grandparents will take their grandchildren or parents will take their children because they were taken to panto, too. For some people it’s a Christmas ritual.” Such was the importance of that ritual at Greenwich that some families returned each year, not only on the same date but also booking the same seats. “By the time I’d finished there, those children were adults. And it was a great pressure to be better every year.”
Clive Rowe also feels that responsibility to exceed expectations. He says it’s all about staying true to the storyline and ensuring everyone in that audience gets included. “I do pantomimes that appeal to the whole family, to all the generations, so the kids have as much fun as the adults.” He and his team of creatives, including writer Will Brenton, refine and sharpen constantly during the intensive rehearsal period. “When you are in the rehearsal room you just try and make it as funny as possible, have as much fun as you possibly can,” he says. “The best comedy routines are rehearsed again and again and again. Great comedy is well rehearsed.”
Most of the time, Will Brenton gets the jokes spot on, adds Rowe, but you can never be sure until show time. “I don’t know what the formula is, I just know that sometimes they make me laugh out loud, and sometimes I know that even if I don’t get them the kids will get them or the adults will get them,” he says. “The audience is the last 25% – and the cast work off the audience.”
That is the thing about panto – it is so interactive and so dependent on the night (or day, for it’s a punishing schedule) that cast and creatives always think on their feet and bounce off the audience response. “It’s a skill, and it’s as difficult to do pantomime as it is doing other forms of theatre,” says Clive Rowe. “And if people say it isn’t, they’re not doing it properly.”
Events can change dynamics, even scripts. Andrew Pollard says a new earworm hit song that comes out shortly before the show may get swapped in to please younger members of the audience. Scripts get adapted when that clever word play you spent ages working on doesn’t get close to the same roar of laughter as the throwaway line about, say, an errant politician. “That’s always the joy of panto,” he adds. “It is live as well, and unlike being in a straight play you can play on it if something goes wrong. You can share it with the audience. I love that.”
“You get letters if you don’t put in terrible, corny old jokes – like the ‘behind you’ routine”
Audiences have strong expectations around familiarity, though. Over all those years writing the panto for Greenwich Theatre, Andrew Pollard used to try and lose some classic lines, thinking new audiences might be tired of the old faithfuls. “But you get letters if you don’t put in terrible, corny old jokes. Like the ‘behind you’ routine – at Greenwich I’d try and do it once every other year and people would say, ‘oh, where was the ghost gag?’.”
Familiar stories, old jokes and lavish costumes are woven through the DNA, but pantomime must also have children in the mix. They are the best audience. Andrew Pollard recalls, still with glee, a matinee where a particularly fierce teacher stood up, just before curtain-up, and ordered her excited class to: ‘sit down, be quiet and say nothing’. This was too much. “When I came on as Dame I said: ‘So what your teacher just said, ignore all that – I want you to shout out and have a good time’,” he says. “That’s what the kids want. They can let off steam. They participate in the telling of the story.”
Clive Rowe agrees that nothing beats the atmosphere of stepping out in front of a very young crowd. “It’s fantastic – it’s absolutely wonderful. It’s like a wall of sound.” So, whatever we adults think pantomime is, children definitely get it. Long may that wall of sound continue.
Cinderella, directed by Clive Rowe, is at Hackney Empire until 31 December. From £10. hackneyempire.co.uk
Jack and the Beanstalk, written and directed by Andrew Pollard, is at King’s Head Theatre until 4 January. From £10. kingsheadtheatre.com
Further reading: Marvellous Matilda
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