It’s Behind Me!

It’s Behind You!

It’s that time of year when a lot of my friends and colleagues are packing up their cars and setting up a temporary home in a new town or city for the sole purpose of entertaining the local families twice, sometimes three times a day. It’s panto season and I am glad to say I am home because for the 27th year in a row my telephone number has not been utilised by any producer of such an event. And I am more than happy about that! 

Oh yes I am!

I have done a pantomime, two in fact. Firstly in 1994 I was Scuddles, I think, in Snow White with Tiffany Chapman of Brookside fame in the title role. And somehow a couple of years later I ended up on a stellar cast for Aladdin in Bath with, among others, Jenny Powell, Mark Curry, a chap from Eastenders and Nicholas Parsons.

On both occasions I can assure you I was awful.  I am no actor and although performing in a panto doesn’t require a great knowledge of a Stanislavsky, a Brecht discipline is useful. 

Discipline was something I struggled with. You only had to ask Jenny who, every night for 80 odd shows at the Theatre Royal, made her first entrance inside a giant bin pushed onto stage by yours truly. Taped lines adorned the floor where the bin should be left but rarely were they accurately hit. Neither was the bin ever facing the right way and perhaps the most fun I had was spinning said bin in circles until she was due to appear and giggled at her inability to stand up straight for the rest of that scene.

I was having fun but perhaps not the right kind of fun. I am comic. We spend our time onstage alone and I was too selfish to be part of a cast.

I am and have always been an unknown so I wasn’t playing the lead. In the case of pantomime that meant I had too much down time for someone that was easily distracted and keen to find new ways to make everyone laugh. The problem was I got as much enjoyment from making the cast laugh out loud as I did the audience. And it’s with this in mind that I came to remember a story from one of the later performances of Snow White back in 1994.

The cast and crew were tired. For weeks it had been like Groundhog Day. Morale was low and I considered myself the the ideal person to lift everyone spirits. How? Easy. We would play ‘It’. (You may call it ‘Tag’.) Either way this simple school playground activity was going to be introduced for an evening performance.

I don’t think I am solely to blame for this, it wasn’t my idea. A year earlier I joined Shane Richie for one of his Butlin’s shows. Part of the deal was his appearance in the resort’s panto and the night I saw it too much fun was being had and I was rightly suspicious. With his cast suffering similar feelings to mine Shane introduced them to onstage ‘It’. And Shane was a hero of mine, so anything he did I would always going to try out given the chance. 

And here it was.

Gathering the cast in the scene dock I explained the rules. If you were ‘It’ you had to get rid of it! Just like the game we played as children but on this particular evening there would be four hundred people watching meaning the only chance you had to get rid of ‘It’ was if your dialogue included the word ‘it’. 

Oh, I should mention that whoever was ‘It’ when the finale ended the drinks that evening were going onto their tab!

I say ‘if your dialogue included…’ but that was slightly misleading. This was pantomime after all and no one kept to the script! Snow White found this out to her own cost early on when this charming young actor managed to get rid of ‘It’ when Scuddles (me) handed her a sweet I’d made for her.

“What is it?” Snow White asked with a smile as she touched my hand. 

I had no dialogue so I ad libbed.

“Look at it?” I offered with a consoling hand on her shoulder. 

Her smile disappeared. 

And the tone for that evening’s show was set. Everyone was involved and the wings were constantly full with colleagues watching the progress of the game.

Our comedy lead for the production was Matthew Savage of Birds of a Feather fame and we had the traditional haunted house scene to open the second half. In a nutshell, it was a dark set with two single beds under individual spotlights that started with Muddles (Mathew) and Scuddles (still me) stuck to each other as we were spooked by a moving candle that kept extinguishing. 

There was supposed to be no dialogue but Matt was ‘It’ so he tapped me and said, far too gleefully,

“It’s moving!”. 

“So it is!” I replied, smiling as I passed ‘It’ back.

“It’s gone out!” Damn, me again, Matt was good.

“Light it again!” I offered because I was better!

And so it went. A scene that had been silent for every performance so far was now littered with dialogue from two actors (well, one actor and a comic) who without giving the game away to the crowd managed to swap ‘It’ dozens of time and at the same time entertain the wings which were full of cast mates and the crew. The scene ended with us in our respective beds. I was ‘It’ and the finale was coming up. I had to get rid of it. So covered in complete darkness I got out of bed and for no apparent reason tapped Muddles. ‘It!’

Free of ‘It’ and a hefty bar bill I headed to the finale and our last song, It’s Time To Care.

I want to tell you that the chaos that ensued was my plan all along but if I am being honest until that performance I didn’t even know that the song was even called It’s Time To Care!

I can’t remember who was ‘It’ at the end of that performance. What I do remember is the Cast Manager calling everyone backstage to laud us with praise.  He’d never witnessed a cast so deep into their run exhibit such fun and energy as he’d just seen from us.

“It was all down to Paul,” began Tiffany before adding “ He told us to play ‘It’ during the show!”

I may have been accused of amateurish behaviour and reprimanded with a verbal warning but, for sure, it wasn’t me buying the drinks that night!

Comments 3

  1. nice one mate I only ever did two as well I did enjoy them though. No wait I also did two at Butlins one when I was dropping for the aforementioned Shane. and an afternoon one where no one ever came and none of us ever really learned the script. Sally Kemp was with me on that one .

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