The giant takes an ungainly step forward, his arms swinging heavily like battering rams. Screams get louder as Robbie Abbott tries to find the right lever to make the giant wink. “That’s his mouth!” He calls out to Emily Wood from the podium on the warehouse floor, and Abbott struggles to lift the giant’s jaw; just like Wood jumped in to save us all from being hit with a giant punch.
Situated on muddy land rented from a farmer in Kent, this monumental corrugated warehouse is Santa’s grotto full of pantomime treasures. Although his normal role is as a workshop assistant, Abbott will soon be stepping off the beanstalk on stage at the Grove theater in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. “I will continue to practice,” he smiles. Nearby, a calm velvet unicorn looks on serenely.
Everything absolutely stinks when you come back in January
Designed by Mike Coleman, the giant is one of the few things not made in-house at the headquarters of pantomime giant Evolution Productions. It houses woodworking, costume and painting workshops, as well as 20 different sets, each taking up two truckloads of storage space. Wood runs the company with her husband Paul Hendy, a writer, director and producer who she describes as “absolutely obsessed” with panto. Once the performances start, they watch their panto each week throughout the run.
This year they are running 10 shows from Sheffield to Shrewsbury; the largest is at the Marlowe theater in Canterbury. Our photographer was stunned to see how excited I was when I spotted Marlowe’s famous bench from the iconic ghost joke scene that was a mainstay of the venue’s panto. At some point in every show, usually in the middle of a chase, the actors take a break at this old wooden bench, where they are plucked off one by one by dancing ghosts. It’s a scene I’ve been shouting about with my family for years, and it’s loved by the Marlowe faithful, too. One year they tried to change the bench and there was almost a riot. “Well,” Wood and I sing with dazzling exposition, complete with knee strikes and flailing arms, “then we’ll have to do it again, won’t we? Wow!”
The company was founded by Wood’s parents in 1982 as Kevin Wood Productions. Wood and Hendy later purchased the company in 2005. At the end of the warehouse’s long main area, a giant yellow eye peeks out from inside a green scaly head. “This is Kevin,” Wood says. “Kevin the kraken and Helga the dragon.” It points to another creature hidden deep within the organized chaos. “In honor of my parents.” His father was also a producer, and his mother only stopped designing for the company a few years ago.
Design is now run by Michelle Marden, who has a substantial box of “beanstalk repair supplies” in her office. We find him in the paint room, painting the façade of a joke shop. The set is one of the last pieces to be built before heading to Marlowe for Aladdin. The paint shop has giant set pieces balanced on wooden frames, the walls lined with glittering boxes in every color imaginable. He estimates that 50kg of material was used in each set; Even in the warehouse the door frames shine gold. “We use yacht wax to keep it in place,” Marden says, touching the glistening frame of a magic mirror to test if it’s still sticky. “We want it to be bulletproof.”
A modern pantomime tends to tell one of a handful of rotating stories, of which Aladdin is one of the most popular. However, the series rightly sparks controversy with its orientalist portrayal of an uncertain and mystical east performed mostly by white actors. Replacing the Victorian setting of the cartoonish Chinese laundromat with a joke shop is part of Evolution’s desire to remove any crude, racist ideas from the show. “Of course you wouldn’t want someone to use a terribly stereotypical Chinese accent or appearance, but the story isn’t problematic,” Wood says bluntly. These are tropes.
In the production of Marlowe, starring Strictly’s Kevin Clifton, the show moved from China to a mythical land like Snow White’s. “We thought: Let’s get rid of anything that could possibly cause an attack,” Wood says. “Let’s put that to rest, and then hopefully Aladdin can keep going for the next 20 years.” In addition to increasing the diversity of the cast, they wanted an attentive reader to review the script. “It’s easy for me to sit here as a white woman making assumptions,” Wood admits. “We wanted to have these discussions with people who were much more knowledgeable.”
Further into the woodshop, a pirate flag from an old production of Peter Pan hangs proudly on the wall. Jon Marsh stops sanding and pulls out a dusty blueprint from under a pile of power tools. He came here from working at Marlowe’s and now his life is panto all year round. “What keeps me going is that we sell about a million tickets,” he says, “so a million people laugh at our shows. If you leave the theater at the same time as the kids, you hear them chatting. It’s a bit of magic.”
At the next table, Marsh’s father, Kevin, is assembling the boards of Marden’s joke shop. “A cow is going to stick its head in there,” he says, gesturing with his saw. He arrived at the workshop fairly new. “I came in January to refurbish some steel shelving and I’ve been here ever since.” It’s a familiar story; Marden started here doing work experience and never left. Later, I met Ali Gray in the wardrobe with a tape measure slung over her shoulders. The recently laid-off woman took her dog for a walk near the warehouse, noticed a sign for a costume sale, and eventually found a job.
Pantomime has graced British theaters since the early 18th century, but only since the 1900s has it acquired a form that is recognizable as the one we stage today. Humorous musical productions have become a critical part of the theater ecosystem. “Pantomime provides around a third to half of a theatre’s income for the whole year,” Wood explains: “So if a theater can have a good panto season, that either gives them some financial security or they can use that to make theatre.” “On shows that are experimental but don’t sell that well. It allows them to give variety.”
Despite its necessity to the industry and its ability to attract every generation of the family to the theatre, panto is often underrated. “I guess people were getting away with doing substandard shows,” Wood reflects. “You see there is a lot of business and investment here. We really try to deliver a quality show. But there was a time when people didn’t do that and the shows were tacky and crude. It’s just a cheap comedy. But the world changed a bit when Ian McKellen started doing panto and the more serious actors said, ‘Yes, it’s OK to do that’.” Thirteen shows a week, two shows a day, three shows on Saturday, it’s not an easy task. . “It’s really tiring work.”
They use underarm pads attached to the inside of costumes to help absorb sweat. Luckily these are washed after every show
Panto costumes need to be durable to withstand the stress of being put on and taken off 13 times a week. “Vodka!” says Nikki Weston, scissors in hand, as she walks toward the costume department. The costumes will be properly dry cleaned at the end of each tour, but until then they will only be cleaned with vodka. “When you come back in January, everything absolutely stinks.” The strange clothes are made of so many different materials that a regular washing machine would chew them up and spit them out the wrong way.
Instead, they get a spray spray mixed with water and Zoflora, a concentrated disinfectant. “This is something that is accepted in the industry,” says Weston. “It’s the same with ballet. You can’t wash a tutu. They use underarm sweat pads attached to the inside of the costumes to help absorb the worst of the sweat. Luckily these are washed after every show.
“They’ll all be used,” Wood says, pointing to boxes piled high in another warehouse: mouse boots, bum rolls, “funny hats” and “hooks (pirates).” “We really try to keep things for as long as they can last. “There are probably costumes here that are appropriate for my age.” This is an attitude he inherited from his mother, who started working with Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough in a traditional repertory theatre. It extends beyond the shows; There are lights from Captain Hook’s boat above the toilets in the warehouse, and they glow red when activated.
Wood rummages through a box labeled “Diamonds.” “What would someone think if they tried to rob this place?” she asks with a laugh as she reveals a sparkling blue gem rescued from an evil villain’s lair. He looks at pumpkins, divers and oversized ostriches. “We’ve got a lot of weird stuff.”
• Jack and the Beanstalk is at the Grove theater in Dunstable until December 31. Aladdin is at the Marlowe Theater in Canterbury until January 7.