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Articles
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Articles |
It's Panto Time!Dateline: 10th December, 2000 It's that time of year again.
Theatres throughout the UK will soon be filled with hoards of young children who are alternately bored and over-excited. Harrassed mothers will be trailing children to already crowded toilets. Theatres' sales of confectionery and ice-cream will skyrocket and the same mothers will hope and pray that sons and daughters will wait until they get off the bus or out of the car before being sick because of said over-excitement, confectionery and ice-creams. Yes, it's panto time again! All over the country pantomimes, amateur and professional, are starting their runs this week or next, and those who run the theatres - the directors, the boards, the administrators and the accountants (especially the accountants) - are rubbing their hands in glee, for this is the time of year when most theatres make more money than at any other time. The Goose that Lays the Golden Egg For all my years in theatre, this year is the first that I have actually had to think about the business side of panto. At the last Board of Directors meeting we anxiously scrutinised the advanced booking for Aladdin, smiling broadly when we saw it was up considerably on last year, but then feeling somewhat apprehensive on being told that we've a bigger cast this year and we've had to invest in new cloths. After all, there's no way we can use the Giant's Castle or Cinderella's kitchen in a show set in China! And how will bar sales fare? Will the fact that we'll have family audiences reduce the beer sales? Will the increase in the sales of sweets, popcorn, ice-cream and soft drinks make up for the reduction in the sale of alcohol? For so many theatres - not just professional but amateur as well - the panto season is the big money-spinner of the year. It's thanks to panto that they can afford the much more artistically satisfying but far less profitable (often, in fact, unprofitable) plays. There are very few occasions when the big, 2000-seater lyric theatres are full for every show, but panto time is one of them. In one such theatre in which I worked some years ago, the average house for a play was under 20% (and occasionally under 10%), whereas the panto played to 95%+. At the theatre for which I am a board member (much smaller, I hasten to add), we took our first bookings for this year's panto during last year's! And a local amateur theatre's panto was sold out for most performances less than a week after booking opened. The Traditional and the Modern And this is why, of course, panto clings to its traditional form whilst allowing modernisation in the content and casting. When I first started working in the professional theatre, the panto stars were the stars of variety. The very first panto I worked on had impressionist Peter Goodwright as Buttons (It was, of course, Cinderella). Then popular singers (not pop singers) became the stars. I remember, for instance, Frank Ifield as Robin Hood in Babes in the Wood. Then the TV stars became the attactions. I well remember David Jason in his first panto at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle: on the opening night he was scared stiff, but he was brilliant! And, funnily enough, he was Buttons too! There was a period, not that long ago, when so-called "personalities" became the stars: Frank Bruno, for instance, and the Gladiators. Now it's soap stars: EastEnders and Coronation Street are the soaps of choice, but Emmerdale isn't far behind. And when they're available, members of the casts of Neighbours and Home and Away are snapped up. It's all, of course, to do with their drawing power. The punters want to see their favourites in their local theatres and the managements are pleased to oblige, because that's what brings in the cash! So the panto isn't just a traditional British Christmas feature, it helps keep your local theatre afloat. Articles Indices:
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