Tim Bannerman's Diary of a Pantomime 4

What is a witch? 

Having played one once, it wasn’t exactly a serious look at the pretty savage way “wise women”, and the odd man, were treated in darker days. My version featured in a theatre production based on the Meg and Mog stories by Helen Nicholl, illustrated in bold, primary colours by the inimitable Jan Pienkowski. 

David Wood is renowned for his classic children’s theatre productions from The Gingerbread Man to The Owl and the Pussycat Went to See… (in which I once played a pith-helmeted Professor Bosh) to The BFG to The Tiger Who Came to Tea and countless other original plays and adaptations over a period of 50 years or more. If you’ve seen the cult Lindsay Anderson film “If…” then you would recognise him as one of the public school rebels with Malcolm McDowell. Oh how I loved that film, having experienced the real thing only shortly before.

My experience as a witch sat alongside another role as the Tiger in David’s Christmas 1983 production of The Meg and Mog Show starring Maureen Lipman at The Unicorn Theatre, also known as the Arts Theatre, in the West End of London theatre land. All right, not Big Theatre West End, but it felt pretty West Endish to a young actor, fresh out of drama school, taking the train up on the little primrose line from Alton in Hampshire every day (except Mondays) to the Big Smoke.

We were pretty silly witches really, mixing magic potions which backfired horribly and singing songs about “Which Witch is Which” etc. And, of course, we wore pointy black hats and black cloaks and kept falling off our broomsticks, mostly as directed in the script.

Tim as the Tiger in the the West End Meg and Mog Show, 1983

But in Grimms Fairy Tales, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, CS Lewis’s Narnia, Harry Potter’s adventures and many others, witches can be pretty scary and practice a broad spectrum of arts from herbal medicine to much darker antics.

So when it comes to writing a pantomime – or my version of one, more Wood-esque play than traditional panto, arguably – how do you best represent a traditional figure in the rural landscape (and you don’t get much more rural than South Herefordshire), one equally respected as reviled over the centuries? Furthermore, how might that figure feature in a 21st century world in which broomsticks are somewhat passé and more likely to be an electric bicycle, for the well-heeled witch at least?

You see there is a local legend in these parts which has it that, for a certain brook to flow and never dry up – and as it runs through the bottom of our garden, we have a personal interest in this – there must always be Nine Witches to guard it.

Now when you’re trying to ensure that everyone has a part in quite a large team of people, all of whom want to shine without having to learn too many words, what better source than the legendary Nine Witches of the local brook? As long as each witch has a distinctive character and can be funny or scary or both – bingo! That’s half the casting done at a stroke.

As I’m covering a mere thousand years of British history in this wildly over-ambitious story, admittedly of an idiosyncratic beginning-and-end kind with not much in between, I want to be both magical-mystical and thoroughly down-to-earth at the same time, if possible. So, at the beginning, we have a lot of shawls and some, quite possibly, pointy hats, presented in a rather “mediaeval mystery play” fashion. Whereas at the end, they could be almost indistinguishable from any of the members of our local parish hall committee – and I should know, being the minute-taker for my sins.

And before anyone says anything, I know. I know what’s going on in The Archers. Every time I hear the blasted theme tune I am irresistibly drawn to hear the latest disaster to befall Linda Snell and her mystery play team down in the wilds of Borsetshire (which, as many of you will know, is a thinly-disguised version of the Herefordshire-Worcestershire area in its more rural reaches). In fact, for that very reason, one of my modern day witches is called, yes, Linda, in my own little homage to one of the great fictional figures of the BBC “Home Service” world.

What is quite fun, for those who know the Nine Witches legend, is the local pastime of deciding who they might be. There are a few prime candidates amongst the residents in our little valley and the hill that dominates its Eastern end. Consequently, quite apart from living with one of them, I need to be careful not to point fingers. After all, I am at considerable personal risk of being turned into, if not a toad, then something distinctly more warty than I am now and there are quite enough nasty things lurking in the shadows these days as it is. Nonetheless, it is hard to resist a few light-touch references to certain characteristics that prevail, such as green-fingered herbal talents, a tendency towards pagan ritual and an ability to enchant or chill in a passing glance. Or maybe that’s just my wife, Gill.

The good news however is that the brook is running beautifully, chuckling away merrily on its serpentine path to the big river far, far below. Ergo, the witches are at full strength. Not that it hasn’t had its moments over the years. Flood, trickle, dodgy froth, you name it. And the profusion of brown trout and freshwater crayfish, let alone otters my great-uncle used to hunt, has long gone, sadly, thanks to chicken farms – and my great-uncle.

Nevertheless, it feels as though there is the full complement of Nine Witches strutting their stuff and I, for one, will do all I can to make sure it continues that way. If only they could do the same for my panto flow.

We had to cancel the meeting last week, thanks to Omicron. And now it’s Christmas. Then New Year’s Eve. And then… Who knows? Oh well – bottoms up!