Genius in the lamp: what makes the perfect panto?

Christmas pantomimes

must win more than three generations to a hearing. So are the old gags gags always the best?

"Hello boys and girls," Shaun Prendergast bellows on a wall in the rehearsal room in Hammersmith Lyric. The answer comes back from the assistant director, is a sleepy groan: "Hello Twankeeee Widow." The last lines of force of syllables. It's 10 o'clock on a Friday morning, just time to call and rapid response

However, even in trials, a pantomime needs of an audience like a kitten needs boots. Routines should be about exploiting the potential and interjections requires practice. Therefore, no one is sitting and watching cajoled to join in. Today, the designer Tom Scutt reluctantly he volunteers as the birthday of a child and get a warm happy birthday chorus of actors. I feel that it is not his first "birthday" of the week.

not even escape the observers. Prendergast sees me: "It must be a shirt Lyric Hammersmith controls very small .." Badum tish done.

gag is an old and even if it's corny, it works because it is so obvious. Prendergast, described by director Steve Marmion as "a joke machine gun," a comedy-confessed geek and a couple of glasses of Eric Morecambe. Widow Twankey is only his second season as a Lady.

When he auditioned for Sarah Cook in Dick Whittington last year, Marmion was so impressed with his series of 30 Quickfire a few sentences he co-opted Prendergast in the editorial team. The two instantly click on a shared enthusiasm for old-school jokes and routines of the crop.

"Pantomime is all for the public," Prendergast said: "He is there to show how the writers are smart or how smart is a concept. It is there to give a very good time the theater. "

Marmion

agrees: ".. The joy of pantomime is very contagious, so it is absolutely useless as fighting or trying to do something intelligent with that hug and do things smart it "

Thus, while Aladdin is the looting of Lady Gaga, which is basically a traditional pantomime. "People have called ours an urban, modern, alternative panto, but that's what has always been panto. In about 1870, the first contemporary pop songs rewritten figure for the action on stage. This is exactly what we do, "said Marmion.

Chris Dunham

However, at present the direction of Cinderella at Richmond Theatre, believes that "being a traditionalist does not mean you're an old fuddy Duddy." While the tradition is very important for him, which is there to serve the story. "It must be played for real and has to live on their own terms. You have a responsibility. You can not fart-ass remarks."

This responsibility is to the audience, especially those who come to the theater for the first time. Marmion feel this way: ".. Of course, you're wrong and it could be for that person's relationship with the theater"

• The two directors are prepared to insist on the basic rules:. Candies come to the right, the villains of the left, in an act must end with a transformation, not ironic comedy of discomfort Ricky Gervais style
Marmion was another: the question "What is my motivation?" Always gets the answer: "It's a pantomime." He is there to avoid unnecessary anxiety. There is simply no time. At three weeks, the rehearsals for Aladdin - Pantomime third opera director Sean Holmes back to the way W6 - are half the length of a standard process

Richmond

Cinderella, with Gary Wilmot and Jenny Eclair, only a few weeks in the trials and even that is "a luxury", according to Graham Hoardley Ugly Sister, Christmas was just the job went to the hospital with double pneumonia. Some pantomimes, he says, meet in a single week.

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