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| Not long now, boys and girls! |
I live in Salford.
Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I mean parts of it are, but those parts are a good 300m away from my house. My street is full of panto producers and IT technicians. Well, two panto producers and one IT technician. It is a very short street.
However, the point is (was there a point?) you don’t have to stray far from the beaten track before you start seeing the word Juicy emblazoned gaily on female bottoms up and down the pavement.
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| An outfit I would never wear or afford or fit into |
Now, this year we are producing Mother Goose in Saddleworth and Market Drayton, so OF COURSE, I wanted to have her appear in a pink jogging suit with the word GOOSEY across the bottom.
For those that don’t know, Mother Goose is a morally coercive tale about a woman who sells her soul for beauty. As a title, it’s become a lot more popular since Sir Ian did his tour (de-force?) a couple of years ago. Most modern productions that I have seen try to update the very Victorian-Christian parable by thrusting the protagonist into a modern setting. In these reimaginings, Mother Goose fritters away her newly begotten wealth on materialist trappings and twisted by the vainglory of her skin-deep-beauty becomes a shallow and grotesque mimicry of her previous self. “So far, so non-blog-worthy,” I hear you ponder. (Would the people at the back, please ponder more quietly. Thank you). Oh, ye of little faith! The sticking point comes in the fact that the common panto shorthand for materialistic and shallow is an upwardly-mobile working-class WAG.
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| Harry Harris' new book received ★★★★ from reviewers. (Two stars from each). Hurry - some copies still available! |
Can’t you laugh at a WAG? Of course you can, it’s a free country. Laugh at whatever you like. Furthermore, it’s a free market – produce whatever panto you like. I do.
If I want to have a man come on in a woman’s romper suit with GOOSEY written in diamanté studding right across his bum cheeks – dagnammit, I will! But I’m not going to. Because I confess that, on balance, I am a teeny-tiny bit uncomfortable with staging a play in which I prompt the audience to laugh at someone for being working class. The idea has more than a whiff of the Vicky Pollard about it.
I’m not saying you can’t find Vicky Pollard funny. The same is true about GOOSEY in diamanté. I think it is funny. But I’m not sure that me-thinking-it’s-funny is funny, and I don’t think my audience would… a middle-class man pointing and laughing at working class women?! It’s a gag I don’t mind leaving for somebody else.
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And before I get accused of acquiescing to the cancel culture brigade, I’m not…
Honestly, I’m not. I don’t mind sticking my head up above the parapet (as evidenced by my previous blog posts!).
In fact, our production shies away entirely from class as a theme. After all, vanity affects us all – regardless of class – doesn’t it?
I’m not the only panto producer having to wrestle with what jokes I should be making about whom. Last year, Mother Goose at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham got slammed for overstepping their bounds with their vegan joke routine (“G is for gassy, A is for Annoying”). Well, freedom of speech aside, I can’t help but agree with the journalist. As a man who has lived hypocritically in an anarchic vegan circus commune, it seems blinkin’ obvious to me that whoever wrote these jokes isn’t a vegan. For a start, they’re not true, and secondly, they’re not likely to be funny… to a vegan… that isn’t your personal friend.
Comedy is always going to be tricky to judge. Funny often lies somewhere near the edge of safety, but a good heuristic for panto writers might be: if it’s a joke at someone else’s expense, don’t make it.
Even if you’re absolutely sure that the word play you’ve written confusing a rabbi and a rabbit is hilarious, and that no-one could possibly be offended when the dame comes on with floppy ears and ringlets, it’s probably best if you leave that gag for the Jewish panto. Or, better yet, if you’re sure it’s a winner, email Nick Cassenbaum and gift the idea! Imagine the bragging rights you’d get down the pub if it ends up getting included!
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| You getting fangirled in the pub after getting a gag in Nick Cassenbaum's script |
A note of caution
Even if you belong to a community, it mightn’t mean you have carte blanche to say what you want.
At our in-house creative team readthrough of (what I had hoped was the final draft of) Aladdin, I was a bit perplexed when a sequence that sounded hilarious in my head raised a few eyebrows around the table.
The sequence involved three metatextual gay jokes, centred around the stage direction “enter genie behind a big poof/puff.” (The poof in question shall remain nameless, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are!”)
The jokes were funny. Preposterous. Wordplay. Nothing graphic, lewd or remotely suggestive. And what’s more, I’m a gay writer, we’re a gay led theatre company, the actor in question (a dear dear friend) is gay, and furthermore, it’s 2024 so really – who gives a shit? Certainly not the open-minded, progressive audience members of the West Yorkshire hills.
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| TOP TIP: If Les Dennis isn't laughing, the joke isn't funny... |
What I had failed to factor in (of course) is that none of those things were necessarily clear to the audience. To someone who’d just come in off the street, all they’d have seen was someone come on and passive-aggressively out someone one stage in front of an auditorium full of people.*
(*97% full on average)
Of course, if you’re doing a gay panto, the fact that the actors are gay is pretty baked in (if you are doing a gay panto Aladdin and would like to use this joke, feel free… I will even waive my co-writing credit). However, our panto’s not a gay panto (unbelievably – to anyone meeting the cast in the bar after hours), it’s a family panto, and even people who joke about gays with their mates probably don’t bring them home to their families.
Thankfully, my wonderful husband and company producer, Will Cousins, (huge managed to push me off the idea before scripts went out to actors. I’m glad that he did. I went with the rabbi/rabbit bit instead.
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| The Big Tiny's 2024 production of Mother Goose, coming to a theatre near you this Christmas* *provided you live near Market Dragon or Saddleworth. Limited tickets still available! |
