RESEARCH FINDING: These two ingredients are KEY to making better panto

It seems like forever ago that I started my PhD research exploring the question: "How does contemporary British Pantomime respond to Evolving Ideas of Identity?"  For those of you that have continued reading my blog, I'm sure it seems like even longer!

In truth, it's only been three years (nearly), and the end is very firmly in sight. In that time I have:

• interviewed dozens of panto big wigs, 
• held town hall meetings with my audiences, 
• gathered stakeholder feedback, 
• recorded dozens of hours of audio diaries, 
• innovated the form, and 
• analysed my companies data to death.  
• And read about a bajillion books about pantomime history.  
• And another bajillion about identity politics.  
• And at least two bajillion about academic methodology (don't even...) 
• Oh, and best of all - I've produced 7 pantomimes, which I used as a test bed to put my research and ideas into practice.  

I am knackered.  I look forward to publishing my research next year, telling you all what I've discovered, along with my recommendations for best practice.  BUT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WAIT THAT LONG... Right here, on this very blog I can reveal for the first time ever  

My Top Two Innovative Contributions to the Form!!!!

* Application of the Hyperlocal Lens *

* The Repositioning of Meaning-Value with a Gifting Paradigm *

"What are you on about?"  

"Why those two things?"

"How did you get to that decision?"

So many questions! I know - it's exciting, isn't it?  Let me explain... from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. (Apparently - Julie A.)

The Big Bang (T = -6 months)

I got the idea to start my research after a very effervescent conversation about race and Aladdin.  The conversers were a diverse bunch with loads of different opinions, and I found myself defending the "it's traditional" corner.  Before anyone gets any silly ideas: I wasn't in the "slap on some yellow face paint and pigtails" corner, just the: as long as everyone is respectful, it's surely OK to set it in China camp.  

The Emperor of China, Stockport Plaza (2012).
Yellow masking tape over eyes, Wickes (£3.50 per roll)
NB Going by the poster, the upcoming 2025 production features the same costume track! -
hopefully the make-up pad has run out of yellow by now...

I love a good argument!  I'm not even very averse to a bad one, from time to time.  However, in this case I found myself frustrated - not because I was losing. Because I was shut out.  I was white, middle-class, privileged - I had no first hand experience of "feeling yellow," or racial discrimination - and therefore, my view was deemed worthless and therefore disregarded. I'm eager to concede that there is huge and irreplaceable value to be derived from those with lived experience, both in the perspective that it may offer and also in the profundity of subjective truth that it can unlock - however, doing so would not help me.  Even if one could change race, to do so just to win an argument would surely be the worst type of colonialism. 

With all other options off the table, it is to my great chagrin that my antagonistic-ape-brain conjured up for me a secondary, more obscure route by which I might enhance my credibility: "All you need to do" it whispered, "is become the world's expert in that field, and then, come back in 4 years time and retort "AHA! My opinion does matter!"

Stupid, petty, peevish ape-brain... why are you always inventing the most ridiculous strategies just to try and defend your overinflated ego?!

Six months later I was enrolled as a PhD candidate.

Aladdin (T = 12 months)

That Christmas we produced Aladdin at the Met in Bury.   It was the second time we'd staged the show - this time in a much bigger town with vastly different demographics.  Our production practices were informed by what I was learning - we tried different approaches to casting, rewrote the script to reflect different heritages of the actors, even remade a few costumes. However, I didn't lose sight of the main aim: vindication.

The production did end up with a more ethnically diverse cast, but it also had:

• Traditional Peking location
• Glittery Chinese set and cloths
• Chinese policemen
• An Empress in traditional style costume and black wig
• Hanfu inspired costumes
• A traditional Chinese liondancer costume
• Travel to Egypt
• Traditional laundry scene
• Traditional character names
• A gong sound effect
• The Old Bazaar in Cairo
• Sand dance choreography

It also had zero audience complaints, record box office takings, and excellent reviews across the board - including a review in the British Theatre Guide that acknowledged the production "sticks to its traditional setting... while avoiding any uncomfortable racial stereotyping" and "is made by people who clearly love the form."

"There," I thought, "that proves it - it can be done."  I should have felt vindicated, but actually, I felt like... I was answering the wrong question.

The tropes of Aladdin were solidified over 100 years ago, in Victorian Britain - a Britain that was very, very different to the country we live in today.  Not just demographically, but culturally, and also internationally.  The reasons why the Victorians included all these conventions in the panto have either dissipated or withered away.

"OK," I thought.  "So, you can defend Victorian Aladdin. But so what?  Why should we bother?"

If the Victorians used pantomime to build their identity, why shouldn't we?  If pantomime could help build an empire, what else could it do?  It seemed to me, these were much better questions!

★★★★★ 

"Pure family Christmas entertainment and everything you want for a fun filled two and a half hours (including interval), take the family and enjoy"

ABOUT MANCHESTER

 

Rumpelstiltskin (T = 12-24 months)

My first attempt to explore these questions was Rumpelstiltskin.  

No. Days to rehearse the play: 8
No. Days for Will to make the cartouche hang straight: 1.5

It was a familiar title with a mostly-forgotten story, which was great for me.  I bastardised the script and turned it into a play about otherisation and in-/out-grouping dynamics.  Even though the production felt super traditional, it challenged fundamental tenets of the form including what it means to be a villain and the Boalian positioning of the audience as spect-actors.  I loved turning everything upside down, encouraging the children to sell their souls to Rumpelstiltskin in act 1 and hearing the whole audience chanting spells for his revival by the end.  Dramaturgically it had such depth, we had some audience members weeping, yet we managed to deliver it with a lightness of touch that made it relatable for all ages.  It was in the words of the Manchester Evening News a "family crowdpleaser that punches well above its weight."

Nancy Penvose (left) was so dedicated to the role of Rumpelstiltskin
she purposefully lost 4" of height during rehearsal to make him appear more vulnerable

It was a great first foray into how panto could address issues of identity.  But it did so passively.  It was time to try a more active approach.

The Victorians didn't use panto to talk about identity, the used it to create identity.  "I'm going to have a go at that," I thought.  Then spent a few months wondering what identity I wanted to create.

A great fact I'd picked up somewhere from some book that I'm currently too lazy to look back up is: by 1900, 60% of all London pantomimes were staged at least partially in another country. Aladdin was incredibly popular, but even titles like Cinderella had been spruced up (with one production being set in Ethiopia) and seemingly every time we had a war (which was a lot of times, btw) some production of Jack and the Beanstalk would personify our opponent as the Giant.  That's all well and good if you're trying to inculcate an imperial identity within an ethically homogenous, not internationally travelling audience.  But I don't have one of those - so I'd have to do some more thinking.

The Hyperlocal Lens

During my research, I've been keeping a reading log.  I'm now up to about 300 books, which is about right for a PhD bibliography.  But unlike other PhD bibliographies, mine reads like marched through a library with a blunderbuss full library cards, randomly shooting at every disciplinary section and reading the first five books on any shelf I hit.  

Partly this is because when I started I was so ill-informed that I had to get up to base level on pretty much everything all at once.  I've read books on Victorian pantomime, the British Empire, Crip Theory, Feminist theory, Orientalism, Identity Theory, Identity Politics, Psychology, Post-Colonialism... you get the idea.

It was about this time, as I was getting immersed in Media Studies, that I came across the idea of hyperlocality: a way of thinking about geographically bounded shared cultural experience.  Or in other words, things made for people who live near each other.  It was a really interesting lens. Over the last 100 years, demographic shift had changed the make up of panto audiences so much that the rationale underpinning the conventions of the genre was increasingly unsound. Unlike Victorian audiences, modern pantogoers are not a sea of white, Christian, or even British faces - so what are they?  Well, unless you're producing the Palladium panto... they are all local.

This is a local pantomime for local people!

Ironically, Victorian panto producers were already onto this idea, long before Media Studies even existed.  The go-to academic on the topic of regional pantomime production 1860-1900 is Jill Sullivan who first showed in her PhD thesis (2005) "the available empirical evidence has served to foreground the pantomime text as an expression of local concerns and political interests that were particular to each town and displayed an acute awareness of issues of regional identity and status."  

Tip-off: Sullivan's book on the topic:  "The Politics of the Pantomime: Regional Identity in the Theatre 1860–1900" is a fantastic read for anyone interested in the topic (as it was particularly for me, as it has a plethora of specific examples of pantomimes staged in Manchester.)

These hyperlocal conventions seem to get slowly shed by commercial producers during the twentieth century, as mass media shrinks first the country and then the world.  Popular comedy routines become embedded, divorced from their original meaning and then stale.  The pursuit of economies of scale lead to the consolidation of regional contracts into large portfolios of a small number of national players.  The final death knell for hyper localism may well have been heard with the casting of international celebrities, as documented by the UKPA's Simon Sladen.

In the process, the form lost two things of immense value: urgent relevance and connection to their audiences.  I want them back.  And I think we can get them.

A note of caution: Victorian Pantomime production and contemporary practice face vastly different contemporary mores and demographies.  Victorian pantomimes reinforced local identity as a foil against London-centred homogenisation of extent regional cultures. Modern pantomime must respond to modern audiences who increasingly originate from diverse locations and may include transitory and immigrant populations with few or no long standing ties to the local area and/or theatre tradition.  When we use pantomime to reinforce local identity, we do so not to defend, but to create.  For the modern producer, hyperlocality is an action, not a reaction - and as such, demands a greater level of sophistication, forethought and precision in its application.

Mother Goose (T = 24 months)

The next iteration of my practice was a hyperlocal production of Mother Goose which we made from scratch specifically for Saddleworth.  I'm not the first person to reimagine this outdated story in the present moment - in our production, Mother Goose didn't wish for beauty or youth, but 100000 TikTok followers instead.  

Despite his best efforts, hyperlocal puppy Toby was largely ineffective at installing the set

Not only did we make it much more relevant for right now, at the same time we made great efforts to make it relevant right here. We made it hyperlocal.

I love Saddleworth, and so does my audience.  So it seemed like the natural place to set the story.  We went round the town taking photos of interesting and recognisable views - views which we then reimagined in our cloth designs.  Saddleworth is a rural community, so I dumped the demon and brought in a Fox... from Fox Entertainment in Media City, Manchester (the valley and the identity of those who live there is distinct from, and contrasted to their giant metropolis next door).  I wrote in dialect, and filmed VT sections around the town with local people and familiar faces, which we then projected as part of the show.  

Imaginary villain Phineas Fox played by real-life fox Tessa Vale 

Outside the auditorium I called town hall meetings and took polls on what the audience thought was important.  We visited local events throughout the year, in costume.  We engaged with local drama groups, schools and charities, running workshops and competitions.

It was in the production of this show that I felt, as a practitioner, the reward I had hoped would have come from our Chinese-Aladdin.  Aladdin had been my show.  Mother Goose was Saddleworth's show.  And the audience knew it!

Mother Goose led me to articulate another vital pillar of my theoretical framework: 

Meaning-Value and the Gifting Paradigm

When I had started, I had viewed meaning as a thing to be owned, as exemplified in thoughts such as: "You don't own the story Aladdin, just because you've got Chinese heritage," or "I can use my production to create my own meaning."

I have now come to understand that greater value of meaning is realised not through the act of claiming ownership over it, but through the act of giving ownership away.

Pantomime is a commercial form.  Producers make shows to sell.  The most successful and canny producers have a very firm understanding of their target audience: demography, price points, access requirements, celebrity draws. Their production processes are well-oiled machines, turning out palatable productions that equate to bums on seats.  One might say that these producers make these shows for their audience. This is a linguistic trick.  Actually, they make their shows for profit.  The pantomime production is a product, owned by the company, and rented out in 2-hour viewing slots to their target demographics. 

If a pantomime production were truly made for an audience, ownership must be exchanged.  Production processes are still acts of creation, but not of a product, but of a gift.   The distinction is hugely important.

A product is something you can buy off the shelf, generic, available to anyone, anywhere.  Commercial producers love making products - products are very profitable. They can be made to a blueprint by on a schedule, on a line, by workers who only do one thing. Products can be made from interchangeable parts so they are easy to replicated, standardised and predicted.  Products are replaceable.  When somebody buys a product, they buy one instance; the company retains the blueprints and the processes to turn out another instance, and another and so on ad infinity.

When you make a gift for someone, you do so with that person at the forefront of your mind - from the start to the end of the process/. You think about what they already have, and imagine what they might need or want or be delighted by. To make a gift is to make something bespoke, one-off, especially for them, especially by you.  When you give a gift, you relinquish control. It still remains your creation - just as one might recognise a painting as "a Picasso," without implying Picasso still owns it - it just stops being your thing.  

For all the reasons commercial producers love making products, they really don't like making gifts.  Even making a gift for someone you know takes thought, creativity and imagination - and the process is ten times harder if it's someone you only see once a year.  Worst of all, even if you make the perfect gift, once you've given it away, you have to start over again.  Different gifts suit different people - a fact much attestested to by, and at the annoyance of, every Christmas Eve shopper who wishes they could by 12 of one thing and call it quits.

5 signs your show is a product, not a gift.

1. The references are interchangeable.  
• "It could be worse, you could be in <insert name of local town>".
2. The jokes are replicated.  
• Same jokes as last year?  
• Same jokes as the production company other shows?
3. The roles are archetypes not characters.  
• The actors play DAME and COMIC, not SARAH and BILLY.
4. The costumes and set are a hodgepodge of what the producer/hire company/actor has in stock 
• "We'll work out something funny to say when he comes on during rehearsal."
• 
  
5. It contains scenes, routines or lines that somebody else wrote for some other play or film, for some other actors in some other context (and possibly some other generation.) 

• "We'll do that bit - you know that whatshisface does - does anyone remember how it goes?"

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (T= 36 months)

This year's production in Bury will be testbed for my theories and the culmination of my research.  Everything about the production is hyperlocal, from the ground up.  It's been a heck of a task to prep everything, but with 6 weeks until rehearsals, I've got a feeling we're going to give over something quite extraordinary to the people of Bury this Christmas.

There's no space left in this blog to explain how we've applied the lens of hyperlocalism, and the framework of meaning-gifting to all the different parts of our process.  If you want that kind of detail you'll have to wait for the 100,000 word thesis to come out sometimes next summer.  Not only am I recording my journey, I'm establishing recommendations for best practice - so we call all make panto better together.

Of course, if you don't want to wait that long, you can buy a ticket and come and see for yourself!

5 Signs to watch out for, that show The Pied Piper was made as a gift, not a product

(and good ideas to nab and reinvent in your own practice):

 

1.    Themes are relevant to this audience at this time. 

    Everyone in Bury gets a wish every time Bury FC are promoted

    The villain is seeking to develop the land beneath the market 

2.   Local references, characters and plot points hard baked into the script, not added on!

PEEWEE: Where are all the black puddings? Have you checked upper Ramsbottom?

BEA:          I did. I found something.  But it definitely wasn't black pudding.

          ORANGE PEEL: Quiet you two, or I'll invent the police and have you all arrested!

3.    Comedy and meaning emanate from the shared experience of the local audience.

Singing.

Market day in the borough of bury

half hour wait for a table at spoons

half a mile tailback into bury

Grind to a halt on

The b-road from Bolton

And you’ll be here soon!  

4.    Physical elements are designed or sourced specifically to facilitate the moments made by the script-in-performance.

 eg, The front cloth is a map of the town

the portals are Peel Tower and Bury Market sign

the mayor is costumed as an Orange (referencing famous Buryite Robert Peel)

5.    The community are engaged with during the process, not just at the moment of transaction.

Audition slots set aside for local residents.  Local casting.

Opportunities made available for local communities and creatives

Local businesses sponsoring access provision

Follow up surveys and opportunities for feedback

My Amazing Idea for a Mother Goose Costume and Why We're Not Going to Use it.

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.

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.

 

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.

Only £30.99!  Get them while they're hot!

 

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!  

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. 

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.

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!

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!