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I’ve
got a terrible feeling. A terrible feeling that when Peter Foot
asked me to put down my thoughts on, ‘Pantomime Today’, he
thought - thinking he knows me well - that I’d go bleating on
about how it’s all gone down the Swanee. How it’s all just a
tatty excuse to con a few bob out of mums and dads, how nobody
does the “not hear” gag like Dan Leno’s father and how
dreadful it is that fings ain’t what they used to be. Sorry to
disappoint you Peter but I’m not going to.
Well of course pantomime has changed. It has to or die. The
two great changes were when Grimaldi took the show away from the
acrobats and dancers and made comedy the attraction and when
Augustus Harris introduced music hall performers into the plays.
The introduction of comics and big personalities who were
used to playing ‘out in front’ gave the old fashioned, and
dated, entertainment the shot in the
arm
that was essential to it’s survival.
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TECHNOLOGY
THAT CREATES
REAL
MAGIC
We’re now seeing another change. Well several. With the
scarcity of mainstream variety the business doesn’t produce, in
any numbers, the great players of an audience who could make the
hackneyed old routines like ‘Busy Bee’ and ‘The Tree of
Truth’ spring into life. And, apart from a handful of diehards,
we don’t see specialist Dames any more. But - we do have great
advances in technical things that can make real magic -
sophisticated projection and lighting, lasers, all sorts of things
you can do with sound and special effects.
Gone are the days when just the names on the posters: Mr
Pastry, Charlie Cairoli, Laurie Lupino Lane, Terry Scott, Billy
Dainty, Jack Tripp, Arthur Askey, Stanley Baxter
would
guarantee a real
panto.
PANTOMIMES
WILL BECOME MUSICALS
Of course we all shudder when we see, more and more,
performers who are billed on the posters as “from” Big
Brother, The Gladiators, Love Island, The X Factor, News at Ten,
Gardeners World, The Jeremy Kyle Show, Dartmoor Prison!
But it has to be faced - these are the names that the public know
and some
of them will put bums on seats regardless of the fact they can’t
do the job as it used to be. In the past they’ve always relied
on the old fashioned pros to get them through but soon there
won’t be any of them left and then the real change will take
place. Pantomimes will have to become musicals with proper books.
There won’t be many comic routines brought in by the actors as
in days of yore because the new wave of performers don’t have
any. The comedy will have to be new and written especially for the
characters they play. It will be a case, I think, of the piece
being written and then cast appropriately.
The great Pantomime Producer, Paul Elliot, always accused
me of never wanting soap stars in my panto. Not true. There are
some terrific actors in soaps (I particularly like the undertaker
in Coronation
Street!)
and they have been some of the best villains, principal girls and
barons I’ve ever worked with. It all tends to go wrong when they
are
employed as Dame or as the comedy lead. These roles demand the
expertise that only comes through experience. Particularly
experience of working with an audience.
LOVE
THE GENRE
I
do hate the attitude that some, only too soon to be forgotten,
‘names’ have. “Course panto’s a load of ***** but I’m
being paid a bomb so I can stand it for a couple of weeks!”
Happily there are
some who love the genre, love getting an audience “at it”,
enjoy topical ad libbing, relish the kids answering back, and want
to get it right. The only drawback is that runs are so short these
days that by the time they’re getting the hang of it it’s all
over till next Christmas.
But have no fear, panto will be back next Christmas and for
many a Christmas to come. No venue will turn down the biggest
money maker of the year (well apart from Roy
Hudd’s Exceedingly Entertaining Evening
of course!) It is up
to those who put pantomimes together to safeguard its reputation.
Please make sure they protect the only entertainment that is truly
part of our theatrical heritage.
They ignore strong story lines at their peril, tatty sets
and costumes aren’t good enough, smutty gags? no thanks and bad
casting unforgiveable. But the big change won’t include any of
that - will it? He insisted? - OH NO IT WON’T!
Roy Hudd
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