All Panto-ed Out!
So far this year I’ve reviewed productions of Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty and Aladdin, I’ve written and directed a touring production of Aladdin, I’ve written two articles on panto for a BBC magazine (Who Do You Think You Are?) and for a local paper (Newcastle Journal Culture Magazine), and talked about panto on BBC Radio Manchester. I’ve also edited ten panto reviews from other BTG reviewers and I have no doubt that there will be more to come.
I am all panto-ed out!
Seriously, I do really enjoy panto - although I can no longer work myself up to joining in the Oh yes you wills etc - but “as a surfeit of the sweetest things / The deepest loathing to the stomach brings” so it can all get too much, although I have to say that I have not - this year - experienced that “deepest loathing” which only comes when I see panto done really badly. However I have to admit that I am getting close to the “surfeit”!
I don’t have any more to review myself but I will have to take a look at Aladdin on tour a couple more times, if only to keep the cast up to the mark! No, that’s not fair: they’re actually doing it very well, to judge by all the comments that are coming back to me.
Actually there is one comment that I would love to use on posters for future tours but, alas, it isn’t possible for a family show. One (female) member of the audience at one venue commented to our Widow Twankey and Wishee Washee, “You’s two are as funny as f**k”!
No, the interesting thing about catching one of the performances is to see how much of the script I laboured over so carefully actually survives. That’s the great thing about panto: the script is just the starting point and it (shall we say?) develops throughout the run. What doesn’t work is lost (PDQ actually) and what does tends to expand.
And I wonder: do they put in those comments about the awful quality of the jokes when I’m not there?
Actually one of the funniest things to happen this year was right at the end of the show when Wishee Washee laments that Aladdin gets the Princess, Widow Twankey gets Abanazar but he gets no one. The cast, of course, all comfort him by telling him “But you’ve got all the boys and girls in your gang” but on this cocasion one of the mothers in the audience yelled at the top of her voice, “You can have me, pet!” It was all the rest of the cast could do to keep him on the stage!
And of course that’s what makes it possible for a cast to continue enjoying doing the show, even if it’s the third performance that day and you’ve been running for three weeks. No, I’m not talking about pulling a member of the audience but the unpredictable nature of the audience response. They’ll always laugh at places you don’t expect (usually at my jokes, and no one ever expects that) or come up with hilarious comments.
I love panto, but thank goodness it’s only once a year!