Morecambe and Wise, the Billie Eilish costume and the Fracturing of the Common Cultural Landscape

Crack open the champagne!  I have completed the first draft of Rumpelstiltskin, one of our 2023 pantomimes.  Will and I had a read through over a glass of wine.  Some huge wins: the plot, the twists, the song choices for the Act 1 medley.  “But something is missing,” says Will.  “We need a topical Dame costume.”

For the uninitiated, panto tradition dictates that the Dame (a male actor dressed up as a woman for comedic effect) has a different costume every time she enters the stage.  A typical costume track for one of our shows will include 8-12 different Dame costumes – which is always a little heart-in-mouth-inducing at the beginning of the process, as we make our own costume track, and the costumes tend to get more elaborate and preposterous as the show continues. 

Some of these costumes slots are already ‘taken’:

•  The Dame’s entrance scene is usually a worker – a big frock in a traditional cut worn over a crinoline.   We use a worker primarily for two reasons: firstly, in terms of stage time, this is probably the Dame’s longest scene (it often starts with a 5 minute stand up routine in which she chooses a boyfriend) so it’s good to give her something easy to wear; and secondly, it’s the first costume the audience see, so in terms of “knock-out” costumes, you really want to keep your powder dry until act 2.
  
• The slosh costume is going to be covered in flour or shaving foam multiple times a day, so it needs to be made of something easy to wipe down, be machine washable or you have two identical copies.
• The walkdown dress is part of a set, so the colours and materials are dictated by whichever colour comes next in your cycle (if you had red and gold last year for Robin Hood, you’d better have green or purple for this year’s Rumpelstiltskin!

 However, even with these choices spoken for, that leaves a number of slots available for comedic costumes.  It’s always great to have something local (e.g. the very Welsh Daffodil dress on display in the foyer of Theatre Clwyd, Mold) unexpected (in our 2022 Aladdin, the on-stage fireplace morphed into a dame dress) or iconic of modern culture (it’s interesting to notice how, in recent years, the various iterations of the “Greggs” dress have gradually replaced the McDonald’s dresses of yesteryear.)

 

Dominic McChesney as an unexpected fireplace, Aladdin 2022 (The Big Tiny). 
Photo by Howard Barlow

But what are the icons of modern culture?

In the 2021 Oldham Coliseum production of Aladdin, Widow Twankey (Richard Fletcher) got a round of applause when she came on as a grungy teenager bedecked in green wig, baggy trousers and sleeve of tattoos (costume design: Celia Perkins).  I enjoyed the costume for what it was, but it took another theatre maker to tell me that it was a pastiche of Billy Eilish.  “I liked the way they had a costume the kids would recognise,” she said.  Indeed.  It is to my great chagrin that I, a 40-something fuddy-duddy, didn’t instantly recognise this bona fide icon of youth culture.

The truth of the matter is, I don’t make a lot of space in my life for modern pop music.  My free time is spent watching Simon and Mark solving Sudoku on YouTube (Cracking the Cryptic if you want to check them out).

The fracturing of the modern media sphere has left us all as consumers on ever more isolated insulae.  I watch Netflix, you watch Amazon Prime; you listen to Billy Eilish, I solve Sudoku.  Even people using the same platforms have wildly different experiences, because the slice of the near-infinite choice of consumable media which is presented to us is curated by ineffable algorithms.  Algorithms do not care about common cultural touchstones.

Gone are the days of a largely shared cultural landscape.  Morecambe and Wise used to get tens of millions of views.  A pantomime Dame in the 80s could confidently stride onto stage in an Only Fools and Horses inspired costume and fully expect the whole audience to immediately fall about laughing. 

Every year, across the country, panto producers cross their fingers that something, anything, will break through into mainstream consciousness enough for everyone to recognise it.  In Robin Hood (Huddersfield, 2021) we put our evil henchman in a Squid Game costume for the evil magic trick scene.  Not as instantly recognisable as Dame Del-boy, but at least it was something.

So what are we left with in 2023?  What pickings still lie on the smorgasbord of shared cultural touchstones?  We all watched Happy Valley… or did we?  Is everyone still watching I’m a Celebrity?  If we do make a Sudoku costume, how many people will shout out “there’s a 3 in the corner”? 

Of course, for me, there is one, temptingly easy conclusion… I’ll let Will make the decision and add the costume to the stage directions in the second edit.

 

Market Drayton & Saddleworth 2023, The Big Tiny