Thank goodness it’s panto season. After the year it’s been, we could all use alaugh. Panto provides a cathartic end-of-year clearout: 2016 – it’s behind you.
As an art form, however, pantomime isn’t exactly of the moment. Some are more cutting edge than others, but panto is, by its very nature, old school entertainment. It’s often bossed by old hands – and, naturally, old hams. In York, local grandee Berwick Kaler is closing in on 40 years in the dame’s frock, while Nottingham’s Kenneth Alan Taylor has half a century under his belt. Each theatre’s annual affair is an institution of its own.
“You only really get to know pantomime by doing it,” says Susie McKenna. Having played her first principal boy at 19 (Dick Whittington for Colchester Mercury), she’s helmed Hackney Empire’s annual knees-up for the last 18 years, building its reputation as one of London’s best. “There’s nothing else like it,” she stresses. “You’ve got to learn on the job.”
But where does that leave the new blood? Ellen McDougall, a pantomime newbie, had her first foray into the art form last year with Cinderella at the Lyric Hammersmith in London and is back there this winter with Aladdin. It was, she says, a leap in the dark: “When I first said yes, I thought, ‘I have no idea how to do that or what it’s going to involve’. I wanted to learn something new.”
McDougall came to panto having worked in children’s theatre, such as the Unicorn’s bold Henry the Fifth. She figured she’d apply the same logic of direct contact with a panto audience but, she says: “This was a different thing altogether.” McKenna jumps in: “With panto, you’ve got an audience aged five to 95, and you’ve got to keep them all interested. That’s why it’s so special. We don’t even watch television as a family any more, so the fact you can get grannies and kids all watching the same thing together – that’s the challenge and the joy.”
McDougall is one of the most exciting young directors in the UK with a flair for formal experimentation. Next year, she will become the artistic director of the innovative Gate theatre in London. What’s a director like her doing in panto?
“People feel as if it’s very different to other types of theatre, but for me it’s also the same,” she says. “You’re telling the story clearly and keeping the stakes high, but it’s a conversation with the audience. In a panto, you’re always yourself – an actor and a character at the same time. That’s influenced the way I’ve worked in shows since.”
It is, in other words, a careful balancing act – as self aware and meta-theatrical as some of the most cutting-edge theatre. “There’s still a snobbery, and there shouldn’t be,” McKenna insists. “You know what? It’s very hard to do.”
And not just hard, but important – which is arguably more important than ever. Panto is an introduction to the art form – “the first time kids, even some adults, come to the theatre,” says McKenna. Bore them, and you can put them off theatre for good. Hook ’em in, and you start a habit.
It’s also a chance to replenish the coffers. Two decades after McKenna proposed an in-house panto, Hackney’s one accounts for 40% of the Empire’s annual income. “It becomes the thing that pays for Pinter,” she says. So if the festive show has to pull in the punters, entrusting it to a rookie is no small matter.
Panto is an intrinsic part of this country’s heritage – “quintessentially British,” says McDougall. “It’s part of our cultural DNA.” Directors are handling something much bigger than a single show. They’re upholding traditions that run deep. Its origins date as far back as the middle ages.
McDougall researched its history to better understand its workings, reading up on its music hall roots, but the form has something akin to an oral tradition, too; a practical lineage passed from dame to dame, director to director. McDougall sat down with the Lyric’s artistic director Sean Holmes, who had in turn sought advice from McKenna. Her guru? Kenneth Alan Taylor. “He passed a lot of things on in terms of its importance and structure.”
In a sense, pantos are still being passed on; the same stories and the same routines. “There’s a recipe,” says McDougall. “You’re not reinventing the wheel each time. You’re just decorating it with the things that work for that year.”
It is, they agree, a huge undertaking. “You’re basically making a new musical each year,” says McDougall. Rehearsed in three weeks, teched in three days, the panto machine has a lot of cogs: scenes, routines, choreography plus all the bells and whistles, magic and dry ice. “You’re using all the tricks you can,” says McKenna. McDougall nods: “It’s another level of difficult than I’ve experienced before. So many elements have to come together.”
Not least the audience. “They’re the last member of your cast,” McKenna stresses. “If you ignore them for a second, they back off for good.”
That, McDougall believes, is where experience comes in. “You discover, when you first go on stage, who’s got the muscle to survive heckling and all of that.” Second time around, she’s given her actors training, bringing disruptive audiences – schoolkids and theatre staff – into the rehearsal room.
It’s audiences that keep the form fresh. Panto has to play to the people in the room and, as they change, so must the art form. Out of that, new local traditions emerge – Hammersmith’s has its own anthem – but so do new cultural influences. McKenna used diverse casting in the 90s – revelatory at a time when, as she says, “the only black actors in panto were token baddies” – but she’s increasingly seeking to mix in other references. “Our audience is made up of every demographic and every culture going, so it’s imperative that their panto is inclusive and diverse.”
In that sense, panto might be the best possible riposte to Brexit: British to its core, but also a multicultural melting pot. The key is to keep pushing it forwards, as McKenna insists: “Don’t leave it stuck in the 50s, for Christ’s sake. Bring it up to date.”
- Sleeping Beauty is at Hackney Empire, London, from 26 November to 8 January. Aladdin is at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 7 January.
