16 Dec A Sense of Direction – A Convert to Panto

He has spent the last thirty-five years writing and staging them, but director Peter Rowe did not see a pantomime until he was in his early twenties. At first, he admits, he was snobbish about them.

“Pantomime just wasn’t part of our family tradition when I was young,” Rowe remembers. “We went to some musical theatre, but never to pantomimes. It wasn’t until I was working at the Thorndyke Theatre in Leatherhead in my twenties that I saw one. At the time, like a lot of people still do, I thought they were cheap and tacky and commercial. I looked down on them a bit.”

Rowe’s prejudice did not last long. He staged his first pantomime, Cinderella and Her Rockin’ Feller, at the Liverpool Everyman in the late 1980s, and, by and large, has continued to do so ever since – at the Wythenshawe Forum Theatre, at Mold’s Theatr Clwyd, during his decade as artistic director of the Liverpool Everyman, and during his two decades in charge of Ipswich’s New Wolsey Theatre.

Along the way, Rowe developed a unique formula for pantomime, one that still serves both the Everyman Theatre and the New Wolsey Theatre well to this day: the rock ‘n’ roll pantomime, a jukebox reworking of a classic fairytale, stuffed full of classic songs, all performed live by a cast of actor-musicians. “Most pantos have songs, but usually the actors just sing with a band,” Rowe explains. “With ours, the cast is the band, and they move freely between acting, singing, and playing instruments. It is the best bits of a pantomime, crossed with a really good covers band gig.”

And, along the way, Rowe learned to love the form. “I love pantomimes, and I love doing them every year,” he says. I love working with an ensemble of actor-musicians. I love seeing the effect they have on an audience. That is the real buzz – seeing an audience leave at the end of a show, smiles on their faces, chatting, talking, and clearly seeing that they have had the best time.”

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Directing a pantomime is not like directing any other show, though. The process of staging one, Rowe explains, is a lot more logistical than the process of staging a play or a musical.

“It is much more of a jigsaw, particularly with the rock ‘n’ roll pantomimes,” he says. “You have to factor in where everyone needs to be, when they need to be there, what costume they need to be wearing, what instrument they need to be playing, and that has a knock-on effect on everything else. Does someone have time to play the drums for that number, get down to stage right and enter as the back legs of a camel thirty seconds later? We have to sit down and do all those calculations.”

The sheer organisational challenge of staging a panto leaves less room for other concerns, like characterisation, adds Rowe. This is not as big a problem with pantomime as it is with plays, though, as there is a much more transparent distinction between cast and character: in panto, the audience expects the actor to be very visible behind the part they are playing. That – and the corpsing and capering it leads to – is all part of the festive fun, explains Rowe, but it can be a fine line to find.

“Of course, pantos are supposed to go a bit off piste and the cast is supposed to have fun, but if it ever feels like the actors are having a private party on stage that the audience isn’t invited to, that is death for the show,” he says. “Someone slipping up and things going wrong is fine. That is all grist to the mill – but the audience have to be included in the joke. I come down pretty hard on that.”

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There are other concerns for pantomime directors. They need to adjust the tone of each performance to suit particular audiences: a late-night show for adults only should be a lot ruder and more risqué than an early morning show for schools. They need to get to grips with classic pantomime routines: He’s Behind You; Oh Yes, He Is, et cetera. They need to make sure their cast – and particularly their dame – is experienced with audience interaction. And, adds Rowe, they need to keep the company’s spirits up during what can be a long and difficult job for performers.

“Pantomime can be really gruelling,” Rowe says. “Some pantos do two or three shows a day sometimes. I’ve seen pantomimes and it is clear that the company don’t know what show of the day it is, or even what day of the week it is. People get ill at this time of year. Sometimes they are away from their families, too. It’s my responsibility to keep their energy levels up through all of that.”

Rowe stepped down as artistic director of the New Wolsey Theatre earlier this year – along with his wife and the theatre’s chief executive Sarah Holmes – after over two decades in the role. He still lives in Ipswich, though, and he is still closely associated with the New Wolsey and its pantomime. In fact, he directed this year’s show, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which opened in late November.

Pantomimes are important for several reasons, he says. Firstly, because they are essential to the economics of regional theatre: as the old saying goes, you put on the panto to pay for the Pinter. Secondly, because they provide employment for theatre professionals on and off stage. And thirdly, because they are most people’s first experience of theatre – and that is a big burden to shoulder.

“For many families, the pantomime is the only time that they go to the theatre in the entire year,” he says. “For lots of kids, it is the very first show that they see. To give those people an experience that is exciting, and fun, and high quality is really important. The slight snobbishness I had about it early on has completely disappeared. I think it is an essential part of the theatre industry now.”

ENDS

‘A Sense of Direction’ is written by Fergus Morgan.

Photo credit:  Mike Kwasniak