There was a time, somewhere between 1996 and 1999, when I thought Smash Hits ruled the world. I’d shunned my parents’ jazz and blues CDs, picking bubblegum pop over Hugh Masekela, Ella Fitzgerald and Al Jarreau. I was a big girl now – a full eight years old – and preferred Spice Girls, B*Witched, N’Sync and Boyzone, thank you very much.
Then, years after I’d stopped paying attention to them, the names of my former favourites cropped up again: not in the music press, but on pantomime lineups, splashed over garishly colourful flyers. The world of formerly successful pop stars transitioning to pantomime soon turned into a sort of tween music afterlife.
First, 2002 Pop Idol talent show runner-up Gareth Gates is to play Prince Charming in Cinderella at the Lyceum in Crewe (he’s in the centre of the poster, with Cinderella herself behind him). The gap-toothed sweetheart has apparently conquered the stammer that first endeared him to the country, and become a musical theatre regular. He starred in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs last year in south London and the year before played Prince Charming in Cinderella at St Albans’ Alban Arena. Gates has been doing this for years, it turns out.
Next, Antony Costa, of boyband Blue, is to play Prince Charming in Cinderella at Barnstaple’s Grove theatre (months after taking the role of Cousin Kevin in the Blackpool Opera House’s production of Tommy). Why would he want to switch gaggles of pop groupies for whooping, hissing families? “I like being someone else,” he says. “It’s great being recognised and applauded for the music you’ve made, don’t get me wrong, but I find you get to a point where it’s much easier to express yourself when you’re being someone else. When I’m Antony on stage, I don’t know how to ‘be’ sometimes. But when I’m playing a character, it’s much more freeing.”
Costa speaks a lot about creative fulfilment in our short conversation. Being in a manufactured pop group must feel odd, and more akin to doing as you’re told by record label executives than being an expressive artist. Zayn Malik’s departure from One Direction this year has already demonstrated a teenybopper star’s breaking point. He said he left the boyband to live “like a normal 22-year-old” and write the sort of “#realmusic” he actually enjoys.
Other names followed. Michelle Heaton, formerly of latex-loving pop group Liberty X, is appearing in a Hertfordshire production of Aladdin. Faye Tozer from Steps – whose dance moves my cousins and I memorised and imitated in front of the telly – plays the Wicked Witch in Snow White at Whitley Bay theatre. Mark Read from Anglo-Norwegian boyband A1 takes the role of Dandini in Cinderella at Worthing’s Pavilion theatre. Boyzone bad-boy Shane Lynch is cast as Captain Hook at the Stag Community Arts Centre, Sevenoaks, in Peter Pan.
Don't forget to book you #tickets to see a #fantastic #SnowWhite @Playhouse_WB with @StevieWalls @Faye_Tozer #treat pic.twitter.com/Q4uO5uwLxC
— Shane W Mulligan (@Shanewmulligan) December 16, 2015
There are newer singers, too: X Factor 2012 third-place runner-up Christopher Maloney as Captain Hook in Peter Pan at Northwich’s Grange theatre, and X Factor 2007 runner-up Rhydian Roberts playing Prince Charming in Cinderella at Rhyl Pavilion theatre.
In the East Midlands, there’s even a two-for-one special. Ritchie Neville, formerly the floppy-haired one from Five, and ex-Atomic Kitten Natasha Hamilton take to the stage in Derby Arena’s Aladdin (well they are married to each other) – one of several celebrity-dotted pantomimes made by production company Paul Holman Associates this year. As well as Derby’s Aladdin, the company are due to stage Aladdin in Leeds with Lee Brennan from 911, Snow White in Chesterfield with X Factor 2004 contestant Jonathan Ansell and the aforementioned Worthing Pavilion theatre’s Cinderella, starring A1’s Mark Read.
Lee Waddingham, the company’s artistic director and associate producer, has worked on more than 150 pantomimes. On the subject of casting ex-pop stars versus trained actors and singers from the drama school circuit, he’s frank and practical. “Half the battle of getting people to pantomime, to see this great British tradition, is getting the adults to want to go – rather than seeing it as a chore.” A lot of people with young children are likely to have been teenagers when these former boyband and girl group members were in their prime, he says. “I almost like to appeal more to the adult audience. If the celebs appeal to mum and dad as well, they might see it as not just a kids’ thing. One of the jobs of panto is to reflect modern pop culture and who’s better to do that than pop stars?”
Sounds great, but money’s surely a factor, too. After spending his 20s in a boyband with limited time to pick up other skills, did Costa feel that musical theatre and panto were his only viable options, bearing in mind each of the four members of Blue has filed for bankruptcy in recent years? “You can’t rely on the music any more,” he said. “You just can’t. We’re two albums in [to the Blue reunion], and people are still asking: ‘Are Blue back together?’” Musical theatre has now become his main source of income.
Does pantomime ever feel like a step down from arena tours in a chart-topping pop group. “Never, no,” Costa says. “Give me a theatre show any day of the week. I love playing a character: you can get away with doing and saying so much that you can’t when you’re singing in a concert. I love the escapism.”
When I put a similar question to Waddingham, he bristles. “Does panto feel depressing to you?” he asked. “You obviously haven’t ever been to one of my pantos, where people are up, cheering, and giving the performers a standing ovation. Why would that be sad? We’ll play to round about 40,000 people – what part of that is sad? I … just don’t understand how you could say that.”
There is nothing new about pop singers resurfacing in musical theatre. In the 1950s and 60s, singers David Whitfield, Joan Regan, Frank Ifield and Engelbert Humperdinck all performed at London’s Palladium during pantomime season. Cliff Richard and Lulu dabbled later. Beyond reality TV experiments/humiliations such as ITV’s Big Reunion show and its resultant arena tour, there isn’t anywhere else for former teen idols to go: you’ve either got to rehash old material or reinvent yourself.
Enter pantomime, a form of satirical, participatory and subversive theatre about as far removed from pop perfection as you can get. It may not seem as glamorous as whatever imagined reality we have of international celebrity – travel, award shows, pretending the paparazzi aren’t ruining your life – but panto’s legacy and pay seem to please a fair number of singers. With all that makeup and silliness, it’s not that far off Smash Hits anyway, right?
