by The giant takes a lumbering step forward, his arms swinging wildly like battered rams. Crow succeeds as Robbie Abbott tries to find the right lever to tame the giant. “That’s her mouth!” she calls Emily Wood from the warehouse floor and Abbott struggles to lift the giant’s jaws – just as Wood jumps in to save us all from being pummeled by a giant fist.
Sitting on muddy land rented from a farmer in Kent, this corrugated warehouse is a pantomime Santa’s treasure trove. Although in his usual role as a workshop assistant, Abbott will be getting off his beanstalk on stage at the Grove theater in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. “I’ll keep practicing,” he says. A velvet unicorn is observed nearby, undisturbed.
When you come back in January, everything absolutely stinks
The giant, designed by Mike Coleman, is one of the few things not made in-house here at the HQ of pantomime powerhouse Evolution Productions. In addition to their woodworking, costume and painting workshops, there are 20 different suites, each taking up two trucks’ worth of storage. Wood runs the company with her husband, Paul Hendy, who writes, directs and produces, and whom she fondly describes as “absolutely obsessed” with panto. When the shows are on, they watch, in between, their pantos every week throughout the run.
This year they are doing 10 shows, from Sheffield to Shrewsbury, with Canterbury’s Marlowe theater being the biggest. Our photographer raves about how excited I am to see the famous Marlowe bench from its iconic gag ghost scene, a staple of the venue’s panto. At some point in each show, usually in the middle of the chase, the cast takes a break on this old wooden bench where they are plucked off one by one by a ghost dance. It’s a scene I’ve been clamoring for with my family for years, and one of the Marlowe faithful’s favourites. They tried to replace the bench one year and there were practically riots. “Well,” Wood and I sing with a dizzying explanation, complete with knee-slaps and swinging arms, “we’ll have to do it again then, won’t we? Oops!”
Wood’s parents started the company, as Kevin Wood Productions, in 1982. Then Wood and Hendy bought it in 2005. At the end of the warehouse’s long main space, a giant yellow eye peeks out from a scaly green head. “That’s Kevin,” says Wood. “Kevin the kraken and Helga the dragon.” She points to another creature hidden in the depths of organized chaos. “In honor of my parents.” Her father was also a producer, and her mother only stopped designing for the company a few years ago.
Now the design is directed by Michelle Marden, who has an essential box of “beanstalk repair materials” in her office. We find her marking a philosophical shop front in the painting room. It is one of the last pieces to be done before the team goes to the Marlowe for Aladdin. The paint workshop has huge set pieces balanced on wooden frames, the walls lined with boxes of every glitter color imaginable. She estimates that each set uses 50kg of the stuff; even in the warehouse, the door frames are glittering gold. “We use yacht varnish to keep it in place,” reveals Marden, touching the glittering frame of a magic mirror to see if it’s still dull. “We want it to be bulletproof.”
Modern pantomimes tend to tell one of a handful of revolving stories, of which Aladdin is one of the most popular. But with its Orientalist portrayal of a vague and mystical east, often performed mainly by white chestnuts, the show rightly attracts controversy. It’s part of Evolution’s desire to remove any crude, racist ideas from the show, replacing it with the Victorian setting of a Chinese charity laundry with a mock shop. “Obviously, you don’t want someone to have a terrible Chinese accent or look,” Wood says plainly, “but there’s no problem with the situation. There are those tropes.”
In Marlowe’s production, by Strictly’s Kevin Clifton, the show has moved from China to a mythical land, like Snow White. “We thought: let’s get rid of everything that could be a crime,” says Wood. “Let’s bring it back, and hopefully Aladdin can continue for another 20 years.” In addition to increasing diversity in their solutions, they have asked a sensitive reader to go through the script. “It’s easy for me to sit here as a white woman making assumptions,” admits Wood. “We wanted to have those discussions with people who know a lot more.”
Further into the wood workshop, a pirate flag hangs proudly on the wall, a holdover from an old production of Peter Pan. Jon Marsh never stops sanding and produces a dusty blueprint from a pile of power tools. He came here from working at the Marlowe, and now his panto life is all year round. “What keeps me going is that we sell about a million tickets,” he says, “so a million people are laughing at our shows. If you leave the theater at the same time as all the children, you can hear them chatting. It’s a bit of magic.”
At the next table over, Marsh’s father, Kevin, is splicing the wood together for Marden’s philosophy shop. “A cow will poke her head through there,” he says, demonstrating with his saw. He is relatively new to the workshop. “I came to restore some steel shelves in January and have been here ever since.” It’s a familiar story; Marden started here doing work experience and never left. Later, I meet Ali Gray in the wardrobe, a bundle of tape slung around her shoulders. Having been made redundant a while before, she took her dog for a walk near the warehouse, noticed a sign about selling clothes, and eventually got a job.
Since the beginning of the 18th century, the pantomime has been present in British theatres, but it is only since the 1900s that it has appeared in a recognizable form as we see it on stage today. The gag-filled musical performances are a vital part of the theater ecosystem. “Pantomies provide about a third to a half of a theater’s income for the whole year,” explains Wood, “so if a theater can have a good panto season, it gives them a bit of financial security, or they can use for placing. on shows that are more experimental but won’t sell as much. It allows them to diversify.”
Despite its need for the sector and its unique ability to attract all generations of families to the theatre, panto is often overlooked. “I think people got used to putting on substandard shows,” says Wood. “You can see that there is a lot of work and investment here. We try to give a real quality show. But there was a period when people weren’t doing that, and the shows were disturbing and rude. That’s just cheap comedy. But the world changed a bit when Ian McKellen started doing panto and some more serious actors said, ‘Yeah, it’s okay to do it.'” Thirteen episodes a week – two shows a day, with three on Saturday – no easy feat. . “It’s very tiring work.”
To help soak up the sweat, they use armpit pads that are tucked into the suits. These are thankfully washed after every show
To withstand the stress of being cast and doffed 13 times a week, panto costumes have to be tough. “Vodka!” says Nikki Weston, a swashbuckler, as we walk into the clothing department. All the costumes will be properly dried at the end of each run, but until then, they are only cleaned with vodka. “When you come back in January, everything goes downhill.” The amazing outfits are made from so many different materials that a normal washing machine would chew them up and throw them out wrong.
Instead, they get a spritz of the spirit mixed with water and Zoflora, a concentrated disinfectant. “It’s a recognized thing throughout the industry,” says Weston. “The same in ballet. You can’t wash a tutu.” To help with the worst of the sweat, they use armpit sweat pads that are inserted into the suits. These are thankfully washed after every show.
Wooden points to boxes piled high in another storage room, saying, “They will all be used”: rat boots, bulb rolls, “funny hats” and “hooks (pirates)”. “We really try to keep things as long as they last. There are costumes here that are probably my age.” This is an attitude passed down from her mother, who started in traditional theater, working in Scarborough with Alan Ayckbourn. It extends beyond the shows; above the toilets in the warehouse are lamps from Captain Hook’s boat, which glow red when caught.
Wooden rummes three box label “Diamonds”. “What would you think if they tried to rob the place?” she asks with a smile as she pulls out a sparkly blue sweater rescued from the den of disrepair. She looks around at the pumpkins, the plungers, the oversized ostrich. “We have a lot of weird shit.”
• Jack and the Beanstalk is at the Grove Theatre, Dunstable, until 31 December. Aladdin is at the Marlowe theatre, Canterbury, until January 7.
