Panto isn't for kids, you 'nana!

The Biggest Lie in Pantomime

If there's one prevalent myth that needs busting, it's that pantomimes are for kids.

They aren't.

At least, our pantos aren't.  

Of course, there are producers who make pantos for kids.  That's why their pantos are crap. 

Ours are much better than that... our pantomimes are family entertainment.

This is a point I often have to iterate when I come across panto-refuseniks and try to persuade them to come along.

"I don't have any kids to bring with me," they say - as though that's a reasonable excuse not to snap up a ticket.

"You don't need to bring any kids," I explain.  "Family entertainment just means it's suitable for families.  It's really great fun for grown ups too."

This message seems to have permeated our local audience (in Saddleworth, 70% of our tickets for public performances are sold to groups without children).

Of course, we make the shows with kids in mind.  It's kinda pantomime's schtick.  But the honest truth is: children are not a particularly discerning audience.

Kids Being Easily Entertained
Photo by Dionehinchliff, CC by SA-2.0

I'm not saying kids don't know what they like - they obviously do.  Kids like bold characters, funny jokes, bright colours, slapstick, gunge - a good pantomime uses all of these elements.  However (and I'm sorry if this comes as a surprise to you) there are a lot of downright awful pantomimes out there, and most of them have all these elements too.

That's not to say that kids will like any old tosh.  It is certainly possible to make a show that kids don't like - I've seen a fair few pantos that fall into that category (OMG, you are really in trouble if you make a panto and even the kids don't like it!)

But the problem with making shows 'for kids' is that it demands you meet only the lowest of standards.  

Who cares that the Uglies were wearing old rags, did you hear all the kids shouting 'boo' when they tore up the invite?  

Who cares that the plot didn't make any sense, did you hear all the kids sing along to Baby Shark? 

Who cares that Wishee-Washee has no discernible character arc, did you hear how loud the kids shouted "Watcha Wishee!" when he came on?

Kids don't care.

Who cares?
Photo by radarsmum67; CC by 2.0

Does anyone care?

Adults care.  At least they should.  Up and down the country, adults attend truly terrible pantos for all kinds of spurious reasons ranging from guilt to tradition. 

By contrast: good pantos are enjoyed by everyone: kids and adults alike.

Not only is it good art, it's good business.

Remember, adults buy tickets, children do not.  The big panto in town might be 'good for kids', but if mum and dad love the panto down the road, then down the road is where they'll be heading.

Also - not every family has young children.  If your business model relies on pester-power to get bums on seats, you've excluded a large potential customer base.  Furthermore, even families who have young kids, don't have young kids forever - kids grow up, and once they do, shows 'made for kids' lose all of their pulling power.

Demographic shift is coming.  Families are getting smaller; audiences are getting older - and these trends are only becoming more pronounced.  Even if pantomime's were supposed to be shows for kids (which they aren't, but hey ho...) the relative customer base is declining, which is why the smart money's on companies who can diversify what they're offering to meet the evolving requirements of the market share they've established.

The UK's Aging Population

How to tell if your panto is crap

So you've put on a panto.  You've sold a few tickets, some programmes, the odd flashing sword and a fairy's wand or two.  You saunter round the bar at the interval... everybody seems happy enough.  But then again, you remember, it's Christmas - people are always happy at Christmas.  Maybe they're just glad they're off work tomorrow.   Doubts creep in.  

You decide to get some quick audience feedback.  You smile and approach a young mum.  "Are you having a nice time?" you ask.

She smiles and replies - maybe not quite as effusively as you would have liked.  Of course, you were probably hoping for something quite clear and direct, such as: "OMG, WOW!" or perhaps "Watching Act 1 of this play has been a key, seminal moment in my life."  So now you're left trying to pick through her words to parse what she really feels.

Here's a handy quick guide to help you translate:

WHAT THEY SAY: "It's really great.'

WHAT THEY MEAN: "Well done. You've made a good panto."

WHAT THEY SAY: “The kids are loving it.” 

WHAT THEY MEAN: “The panto is crap, but the kids are too young to realise.” 

WHAT THEY SAY: “My eldest's a bit old for panto.” 

WHAT THEY MEAN: “A 12 year old can see that the panto is crap.” 

 

WHAT THEY SAY: “I just like watching the kids enjoying themselves” 

WHAT THEY MEAN: “The panto is so crap, I would literally rather watch other members of the audience than the performance’."

 

WHAT THEY SAY: “There were loads of kids in the audience” 

WHAT THEY MEAN: “The panto is so crap, local people now take it in turns to chaperone each other’s kids so they can have a year off.” 

 

WHAT THEY SAY: “My favourite bit was where you got the kids up on stage."

WHAT THEY MEAN: ”The pantowas crap, but you saved it with a good song sheet."

Doing something better

The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem.  

Don't panic.  You're not alone!  Trust me, I see dozens of pantos every year - loads of pantos are crap.  The good news is, they don't have to be.  Despite what you may been led to believe, it is not beyond the wit of man to write a show that simultaneously contains enough slapstick, gunge and puns to entertain a child, whilst also including enough character comedy, tension and jeopardy to entertain an adult.

How?

That's a trade secret, one that I share only with the few select people who actually read my blog... 

... get ready...

... here it comes... 

... the trick is...

...

... instead of regurgitating any old nonsense, write something genuinely entertaining.  And by that I mean: entertaining for an actual, discerning grown-up.  

I know what I'm about to say might seem totally crazy, but trust me, it totally works.  If you write something so funny it makes grown-ups laugh, kids will laugh at it too!  I know right?  Who knew!  

And it's not just for jokes either - if you write something that's genuinely moving - in the sense that it engenders pathos in an actual, discerning adult, the very same scene will move the kids too!  

Ditto for tension.  

Ditto for catharsis.  

Ditto for dramatic irony.  

IN FACT, it turns out that to make a good kids show, all that you really need to do is make a good show and then let the kids watch it!  

So now you know.  Remember: mum's the word!  It's a trade secret.  Don't spread it around, or everyone will start making good pantos, and we wouldn't want any of that!

Mum's the Word
Photo by Simon_music; CC by 2.0

The Trouble with Double-Entendres

I had an audience complaint.

According to the complainant, one of the lines in Aladdin (2022) was inappropriate for children.

The scene was Act 1, Abanazar has arrived at the Twankey's favela, and the following exchange takes place in rhyming couplets.

According to the complaint, the implied rhyme of cities with titties was absolutely beyond the pale.  Never mind the fact that the word titties was never spoken, the mere suggestion of the rhyme was enough to heap shame upon my writing and the production.

I didn't agree.

Innuendo and double entendre have been a key convention of the pantomime genre for two centuries.

Reviews of a 1903 production of Little Red Riding note that the lovers "kiss, and engage in banter heavy with double entendre, and commentators appear to be well aware of this flirtation" (Shacker, J; Staging Fairyland: Folklore, Children's Entertainment, and Nineteenth-Century Pantomime)

Even as far back as 1781, reviews of Sheridan's Robinson Crusoe describe the scene with the friar smuggling a girl in a bale of hay into the monastery under the label "provisions'. (McVeagh, J., 1990. Journal of Popular Culture, 24(2), pp. 136-137. )

Print: A Just View of the British Stage; Hogarth, W. (1724)

 depicting the managers of Drury Lane 

Audience expect and delight in pantomime innuendo.  When I wrote my little Abanazar stanza, the idea that someone might take offence was so far from my mind, I was taken aback when I received the "disappointed' email.

What must seem like concern for the moral wellbeing of children seemed like prudishness to me.  Of course, these judgements are extremely subjective - one man's cheeky quip is another man's smut - but it does give one pause to consider: exactly where is the line? And how close to it may we sail?

Bad Practice

Of all the sins of bad pantomimes, perhaps none has the potential to go as wrong as hamfisted execution of double-entendre.  At the very least, clumsy attempts at risqué humour make for dull and hackneyed moments, slowing the pace of the show and underwhelming the audience; at their worst, they have the power to embarrass, alienate and offend.

Last week I went to the Lowry to see the touring production of Mother Goose starring Ian McKellen and John Bishop (who are both excellent).  For those who haven't managed to see it, the ensemble play a variety of animals that lived on Mother Goose's farm.  One of these is a bat, who is referred to in two lines as being on the sexual offenders register for exposing himself.  One can't help but wonder what we are supposed to be laughing at.  Sexual predators?  It doesn't strike me as a natural go-to for family friendly funnies.

John Bishop and Sir Ian McKellen in Mother Goose
 (Image: Manuel Harlan)

In the same show we were presented with a lazzi of "I'm not a pheasant plucker", where the actor trying to recite the tongue twister kept almost accidentally saying "I'm not a pleasant fucker", but getting cut off just before he 'does a swear'.  Not only was the execution lacking (the tedious repetition of the joke belying any pretence of the moment being spontaneous or perilous), but the choice of material begs the question: "what is the joke here?"  That someone nearly says fucker in front of children?  Is that funny?  It certainly didn't tickle me... if anything, it just made me feel uncomfortable.

A much more successful moment was when Mr Goose (John Bishop) was struggling with something long and hard popping up between his legs - a large Toblerone.  It goes to show, bodies are funny in a way sexual offending and swearing in front of children are not.

As disappointing as these misfires were, they were small fry compared to some much more troubling performances I have endured.  I was most befuddled by some of the artistic decisions taken in a recent production of Cinderella (2022, Theatre Royal St Helens), in which Buttons was portrayed as womanising letch who ground his groin up against one female member of the cast after another.  

Despite never having been a woman myself, this character choice left me feeling inordinately uncomfortable.  I can only imagine how much more I should have felt if I had lived experience dealing with that kind of unwanted sexual aggression (as so many women do).  The most egregious moment came during the ballroom scene when Buttons traversed the stage apparently shagging a blow-up doll (the kind one might see on a stag night), hilarity apparently ensuing from the fact that his vigorous bonking kept making the wig fall off.

My party were aghast at this crude spectacle unfolding in front of an audience of young kids.  In fairness to the production team, this escapade seemed to delight a large portion of the audience who hooted, applauded and cheered in delight.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I wouldn't have been happy if I had come with young children.

It caused me to recall the two gay dads I once sat behind at the M&S arena during a performance of Sleeping Beauty (Apr 2021).   During an ad-libbed bit of audience participation, the comic  jokingly accused some men near the front of looking like 'poofs' - a very jarring word to hear, particularly from such a laddy performer, uttered in an apparently jovial manner.  I remember the dads in front of me wrapping their arms around their daughter, seeming to hold onto her for dear life.  Quite what possessed him to use that word, I don't know.  Presumably it is part of the performers go to vocabulary.  One can only hope that the SM excoriated him in the show report... but I'm not sure I hold out all that much hope.

Jokes should be fun for everybody, not just the performer, nor those they attempt to implicate as being on their side.

Doing Something Better

I for one have had my fill of bad innuendo.  There is absolutely no reason why humour cannot simultaneously be inclusive, well-crafted and risqué.  

Remember, good double entendre is RUDE (it's a mnemonic - geddit!).  It stands for - 

1. RESPECTFUL.  

Audiences are made up of individuals who likely represent a broad range of sensitivities and lived experience.  You can be funny without being provocative. Good humour makes fun with people, not of people.

One of my favourite reviews we have received was for Robin Hood at the LBT, Huddersfield (2021) "Merry, risqué and very funny".  Yorkshire Live

The same review goes on to describe one moment that really tickled the reviewer:

"At one point, audience favourite Will Scarlet cracked a 'willy joke' that was so silly he appeared to forget his lines for a moment, but we hardly noticed through the laughter." 

For the interested reader, here is the joke in all it's glory:

I love this joke.  The surface meaning is crisp and innocent.  The phrasing is streamlined and the rhythm bounces along.  Also, willies are hilarious and a little bit rude - perfect fodder for panto humour.   I also like the fact that the joke is crafted around a body part, rather than a verb - jokes about "Master Bakers" or "shooting over the Ring Master's back" (the infamous offering from Julian Carey at the Palladium) seem inexorably more crass as they invite the audience to picture the act in question.

Some people like having the Willies put up them
Robin Hood at the LBT, Huddersfield ©️The Big Tiny, 2022

2.   UNEXPECTED.

A good double-entendre should catch the audience off guard.  The audience should laugh because they are surprised.

Lazy direction/performance may seek to draw humour out of a rude word absent of clever and unexpected wordplay.  Such unimaginative appeals to the puerile may elicit a titter or two - some proportion of an audience will always laugh when cued - but better writing doesn't require propping up.

Consider this joke from our Aladdin:

No rude words necessary.  The scansion of the line and the bait-and-switch punchline are sufficient to catch the audience off guard.  Delivered expertly by Dom McChesney, this joke never failed to get a great reaction.

3.   DEADPAN (then corpse if it warrants it).  

The delight of the adults is in the secret communion with the actor, in plain sight of the children.  Don't give the game away with crude gestures or mugging to the audience.

Remember, the joy of the double-entendre is the communion of the adult audience with the actor - in plain sight of the children.  It is the success of this secret-shared that propels a double-entendre beyond more basic wordplay.

4.    EASY.

 The best moments feel fleeting, ephemeral and organic. So, you've created a funny moment, don't labour it.  A good joke doesn't need to be pointed out with neon arrows.  Extraneous ad-libs and 'funny' asides undermine the strength of the moment and water down the comedy.  Many a good joke is butchered by a codicil of "Eh, up" or "You know what I mean" - the verbal equivalent of holding up a 'laugh now' sign - which if anything, may make the performer seem amateurish.

He who has ears, let him hear, and let's all be RUDE together!

Is this Costume Racist?

Sergeant Pepper's uniform in construction
Photo by Ben Richards © 2022

The Aladdin Controversy: An explanation

Most panto Aladdins are, as the traditional folk story, set in the town of Peking. (If you thought it was set in Arabia, blame Disney.)

Forty years ago if you went to see Aladdin the panto, you may well have been treated(?!) to white men in yellow make-up and fake teeth wearing lampshades on their heads and doing a "Chinese language test" in a "fahnnee voyss".  Thankfully you're much less likely to see those kind of shennanigans on stage nowadays - I have a feeling most modern audiences might be more inclined to complain than applaud if confronted with that kind of otherisation.

• Aladdin Pantomime Poster from 1886
  Public Domain, from the British Library's collections, 2013

• 
  

However, Aladdin has (up till now) managed to trundle on.  It's a popular story: the kids know the Disney film and making a panto is so ruinously expensive, producers are keen to realise the value of their investments in costumes, sets and flying carpets.

Recently however, the panto title of Aladdin has been subject of no little disquiet.  Some people have called for greater ethnic diversity in casting. Some people argue that productions would be best cast only with actors from the global majority.  Some people are of the mind that having a show set in China is, in and of itself, so problematic that the best thing to do is ditch it entirely.  Indeed, so vociferous is the criticism from some quarters that some companies are doing just that.  Crossroads, the UK's largest pantomime producer stopped producing Aladdin last year, and I hear on the grapevine one of the other biggies is on the cusp of following suit.

Although I personally don't share these positions, I must confess I find it all extremely interesting.  So interesting, in fact, that I started to study a PhD in it.

So lively is the debate some may be cautious to express counterposing opinions.  One could almost imagine there may have been some very big meeting (presumably in London), only somehow somebody misplaced your invite, and now it's too late: everything's already been decided.

A couple questions which I have been asked during my research:

Question 1: On Panto Day (a lovely bit of fun that brings the industry together) did the admins of the official Twitter account retweet all the fun messages sent by the casts, except those performing Aladdin?

Question 2: Have I noticed the scarcity of nominations for actors in Aladdins amongst this year's UKPA nominations?  Is there a blanket ban on white actors being nominated for acting in Aladdin?

I must confess, when these questions have been put to me, I haven't had an immediate answer.  The fact that they are being asked is, in an of itself, of note, and certainly prompts thought.

Speaking for myself, I do think that if the grandees have decided that Aladdin must die, I wish they'd send a round robin email so at least we all knew what was happening.  It may even facilitate some debate!   By contrast, stage-managing a surreptitious slide into obsolescence surely stifles constructive debate.  Death by a thousand cuts is the cruellest murder of all!

The Aladdin Controversy: A Dissenting Opinion

When we decided to stage Aladdin, I never had a doubt that I would set it in Peking. My husband takes the lead on the set design, but I remember the thrill of making the mood boards, all the lovely reds and golds, dragon curves and gongs and pointy roofs.  

Hong Kong where my dad grew up
Photo by Skyseeker under Creative Commons Licence Attribution 2.0

I like China. My dad grew up in Hong Kong and my mother was down the coast in Singapore. I like Chinese style, I cook Chinese food, I have Chinese friends.  I particularly love the aesthetics from the mid to late Ming dynasty (roughly equivalent to the late medieval period in Europe) - the art, the fashion, the architecture: it really is rather quite splendid.  We drew upon it a lot as inspiration for our set design.  We researched, synthesised, imagined; we made a model box to make sure it was just how we liked it.  Then we bought and cut the wood to make the flats, we build the portals, stuck on glitter, we painted the cloths, we sewed the costumes and when we had finished, everything just the way we imagined it.  Wonderful, magical, Chinese.  An idealised pastiche of China, for sure - but our ideal, for our show, that we made. 

Some may say they don't like the style, but that’s OK by me. There are those who like Aladdin set in London (Lyric Hammersmith, 2021) or a haunted funfair in Manchester (Oldham Coliseum, 2021), and when they build their pantomime, they build the style they like. It’s a big wide world, and there’s more than enough room for a few different styles of Aladdin then people can take their pick. 

 In the words of the bard: 

"What if my house be troubled with a rat, 

And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats To have it baned? 

What, are you answered yet? 

Some men there are love not a gaping pig, 

Some that are mad if they behold a cat, 

And others when the bagpipe sings i’th’ nose 

Cannot contain their urine; for affection, 

Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood 

Of what it likes or loathes"

 - Merchant of Venice, Act 4.  © Billyboi S-Peare (Olden times) 

I’ve butted heads with some who argue that the use of Chinese styles is at best misplaced chinoiserie, or worse, base Orientalism. I’ve heard it argued that it poor behooves a show to reduce the complex heritage of an ancient and diverse civilisation to hackneyed representations of Eastern iconography caricatured in broad and brassy brushstrokes.  But to me, this argument holds little water. 

Of course it’s pastiche, we’re making a panto. Broad brushstrokes is a key convention of the genre. If anyone’s making a panto that doesn’t look like a brassy caricature, they need to buy a broader brush. Yes, I know China’s not really a magical glittery kingdom. It’s not a realistic art form. Mother Goose is set on a farm, nobody complains that the stage isn’t covered in animal dung. (In actuality, I gave my Aladdin script a socialist bent and we ended up staging 60% or the scenes in a modern favela).

Shylock confronts Bassanio on the Rialto
William Shakespeare, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Power of Costume

“Symbols and representations are important in the production of identities. This is how we signal our identities to others and how we know which people we identify with and those who are distinguished as being different. How we speak, the clothes we wear, badges, scarves, uniforms or flags all offer symbols of identity.”

- p12. Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Nation. Woodward, K (2004) p12.

Costume has power.  We harness it in our daily lives: a suit for work projects seriousness of purpose, a hard hat implies you’re a safe pair of hands. An expensive long white bridal dress symbolises purity, virginity, and a willingness to get into credit card debt to look good for the photos. Costumes are symbols, they have meanings: emergent properties, borne from the shared cultural values of the wearer and the viewer, made manifest through the act of wearing. 

For example: in my former life as a master of a boarding school, I Bunburied about Hertfordshire wearing a traditional academic gown... the kind Mr Chips would use to dust the chalk off the board. Many of the senior staff wore them - swooshing up and down the corridors. It gave authority, presence. It said: "here is a man (for it was just the men) with degrees and experience; listen to him; he’s clever; he must have something worth saying."  I didn’t. Not often. Nor did the gown make me any more clever than I had been without it. But it allowed me to claim these ethereal benefits. The ownership of the gown was merely incidental. It was the wearing of the gown that allowed me ownership of an elevated status. 

By this simple example we can see how semiotics (signs and symbols) allow the wearer of a costume to claim the qualities and characteristics with which it is associated. And herein lies the rub: the question of who owns the costume is just a matter of receipt. The question of who owns the meaning is often times contested.

Who owns Meaning?

"Meaning is an emergent, not intrinsic, property."

                        -  Me © Right now

What do I mean by that?  Let's try a thought experiment.  Imagine being in a crowd at the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa.  Everybody's cooing and jostling: taking a photo - isn't she beautiful?  Do you think she's beautiful?  What is the source of her beauty?   Is it inside her, the model?  Or in the brush of the artist?  Or is it perhaps in the way you perceive her?

Mona Lisa Lolcat
by Planetrussell is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Now, imagine walking up and snatching that painting right off the wall.  Imagine how it feels in your hands.  How much does it weigh? Guess.  Did you guess 2.4 kg?  You might be right.  I don't know.  I didn't bother to look it up, I'm just banking on you not being bothered to either.  Whatever it weighs, the point is it weighs.. something. 

Imagine getting a bread knife and scraping off all of the paint, dismantle the frame, screw up the canvas into a ball and pop all the pieces into a blender.  Lift it up.  Heavy isn't it?  That's because the property of weight is intrinsic to the object.  You cannot separate it out.  It's in it.  It is it.  

But pour out all the bits and try and find the meaning.  It's gone.  It's not there.  The meaning is not in the painting, it is emergent.  It's a byproduct of interaction: between Da Vinci and the paint, between the model and the artist, between the tourists and the museum.  It's very real.  Meaning is (like beauty, monetary value, love) a miraculous by-product of thinking minds experiencing their own perception of the universe.

So, now that we understand this: Who owns meaning?  How do we decide that?  What does it even mean to own an emergent, intangible commodity - one that we value so highly? 

These aren't churlish questions.  People constantly make all kinds of claims on ownership of meaning.

In this blog, I've made a claim to ownership over the meaning of my production on the basis that I made it.  Actors may claim to own the understanding of their characters.  Likewise audience members have told me with pride "This is our panto.  We come every year!".  We stake claims to ownership through the act of identification.

The Scot who berates an Englishman for wearing a kilt because he identifies both the kilt and himself as Scottish. An administrator may not retweet a Panto Day video because they identify the cast as European but the story as Chinese.

Claims of cultural appropriation are really claims to ownership, staked through identification.  They are claims that although you may own the costume, somebody else owns the meaning.  

I have sympathy for this argument.  It's irksome to get rubbed up the wrong way, particularly by someone who's glib and uncaring, more-so on topics to which you feel deeply attached, and if you experience similar things on a regular basis, it can be truly excruciating.  Identification can be a useful defence.

The sociologist Kath Haywood puts it very well:

"In this sense, although as individuals we have to take up identities actively, those identities are necessarily the product of the society in which we live and our relationship with others... It is a socially recognized position, recognized by others, not just by me."

                                                     - Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Nation. Woodward, K (2004)

When people make claims to ownership it's important to pay attention.  A willingness to listen and imagine another's perspective are key resources, not just in theatre, but in life.

However, meaning is emergent.  There is no meaning in the costume itself.  Meaning is generated in the act of perception.  

Different people may make competing claims to ownership for different reasons, and they may both be justified.  To claim exclusive ownership over meaning is to privilege your own interpretation over that of others.

I'm proud of our shows, of the scripts that I write, of the team we've built, of the costumes we've sewn, of the sets that we've made, of the audiences we've grown.  I identify as the producer of my work, and I would like to stake my own claim to its meaning.  

In the same breath: I'm delighted that others also want to make claims to ownership over the meaning of the work I create.  The ownership of lived experience which I do not have.  A multiplicity of voices can add understanding and depth to art: surely they should inform debate, not close it down.  

Unfortunately, in these days of echo-chamber media, the fragmentation of public discourse is such that, in some cases, the voices that are amplified are the ones shutting down debate rather than opening it up.  To that, I say: the antidote to conflict is conversation, not censorship.

At Last... The Costumes: You be the Judge!

I wanted to reference the beautiful designs of Hanfu (traditional Chinese fashion) - Hopefully while steering clear of cultural appropriation.  I took out some books form the library and used them to pattern a wide sleeved jerkin with a closed front and a Nehru collar so that (hopefully) it's shape was reminiscent of a Tang jacket.

Policemen Costumes.  Hanfu-style cut.
Worn expertly by the hilarious duo Sarah-Lou Young and Tessa Vale
Photo by Ellie Geurin Ⓒ 2022

I steered away from shot silks, which although they are very traditional in look, don't really fit in with our house style of bright and unfussy primary colours.  Instead, I went for a Chinese-British mash-up, combining the Hanfu cut with the traditional check and blue cord of an old fashioned bobby.  We did embroider Chinese lion badges which we emblazoned on anything Royal (the Empress, the palace, the policeman) which I think just jollied everything up a bit, as well as foreshadowing a climactic moment of peril.

Hanfu-Style Suits in Complementary Patchwork
From left: Wishee Washee (Will Cousins), Aladdin (Michael Pellman)
Widow Twankey (Dom McChesney), Abanazar (David Herzog)
Photo by Howard Barlow © The Big Tiny 2022

I used a similar same shape for Wishee Washee and Aladdin (I'm not going to broach the subject of the character names yet - but I'm very aware there's a range of opinions).   We drew inspiration from the laundry scene and came up with the idea for the purple and patchwork design.  Gosh, there's a lot of sewing in that patchwork suit!  I love the way they turned out.  They all look quite different, but still like a set.

The Empress's Dress
Look Closely... that's not Tessa's wig.  It belongs to our Dom the Dame who's standing behind!
Photo by Ellie Geurin © 2022

The Empress costume was hellish to make.  There are layers on layers of padding and linings and all kinds of different materials that all want to go different ways when you sew them.  Cripes, we did a lot of swearing the week we made that dress.  The bold colours make for an eye catching entrance, and it's still very 'ancient Chinese' in style.  In fact, the pattern is based on illustrations of actual Chinese Empresses.  The worst part was actually finishing and then having to make it again for the walk down!

The Finale Set
Just when we thought we were finished: 'We'll have to make it again then won't we?  Whoops"
Audience Snap

We worked really hard on the build for Aladdin, and I'm really proud of what we achieved.  We made it with love, (I'd be mortified if I thought that I'd made a panto that upset someone) and a lot of forethought and yes - I set it in China... and as it stands, I feel comfortable with the decisions I made.  In fact, I think it was smashing.