Tim Bannerman's Diary of a Pantomime 5 - Climbing the Mountain
The trouble with writing something “high concept” as my friend who knows what he’s doing calls it – high concept in this case meaning “impossibly convoluted and bewildering” (and that’s for me, let alone anyone else) – is that you never quite seem to get there.
I mean, this was supposed to be a village panto, right? With a beginning, middle and end, some corny old cross-dressing characters, even cornier gags, and a lot of running up and down the audience throwing sweets and squirting them with water pistols. Or that’s what happened at the last one I went to.
Yes, it was quite good fun. Especially if you were about 5. Less and you’d either be amazingly asleep or traumatised for life. More and you’d seen it all before, really. But still good fun for nearly everyone and better than the telly by a long chalk. For the most part.
But when you’re trying to meet the deadline of a first read-through-cum-final casting session for a post-post-season “panto”, it’s a different kettle of fish. Especially one that thinks it’s a cross between would-be Malory (Le Morte d’A. as opposed to “ll” mountaineer, although…), P.G.Wodehouse, Agatha Christie and something out of Mills & Boon, with enough parts for 20 people, most of whom would rather make it up as they go along rather than learn a lot of lines.
We made it, the deadline, even if we just read extracts and I still hadn’t cracked the dénouement. And they laughed. They even got the bit when the Cinderella character meets her mother for the first time without realising it, on her 18th birthday, having been left on the doorstep in a basket as a baby and brought up by a kindly young toff called Ethel. Short for Ethelred.
The little tremor of emotion rippled through our motley gathering and I allowed myself the indulgence of a moment of what the “ll” Mallory might have felt on reaching – hang on. He did, didn’t he? Or did he? Everest is a bit like Black Friday sales these days with queues stretching round the block, even if you might still lose more than your shirt. But in 1924 – we’re back to kettle of fish.
Yet in that brief moment, I thought – yes! We might just get there. But then reality inevitably crept back in like a cat with a limp offering in its mouth.
There’s still so much to do. Apart from the dénouement, with more loose threads to tie than “Lost”, if you remember that from the Noughties, my induction to the venue this week brought home the magnitude of what lies ahead.
Compared to most village halls, it’s got everything. Eco heating system, café area, toilets you could eat your breakfast off, treatment room, you name it. And a main auditorium equipped with stage lights and sound, let alone a modular staging kit you can adapt for everything from a band to a fashion show. Compared to the previous, much-loved tin shack, it’s the Ritz.
It’s also, despite – or because of – my professional background, a little bit terrifying.
You see, they all think I know what I’m doing. Writer, director, actor, impresario, etc. And I’ve done all that. But the difference is: I had an army in support. Highly trained and experienced specialists in their given sphere – technical, administrative, artistic, etc. Now, it’s just me and Gill.
Oh well, “Nothing Venture, Nothing Win”, as Edmund Hillary, the other great clamberer up ridiculous rocks, entitled his autobiography. Next Sunday, we read through the whole piece with everyone in their allotted roles. Meanwhile, Gill and I frantically try to cut down the impossible length of the thing as it stands, wondering which parts of the plot we can ditch, what jokes are not worth the ink in the printer, and how we can fit in not only songs and dance routines but something else to do with the whole premise of the thing. The Ghost.
Who is he? Really. This Knight Templar-cum-John o’ Kent figure arriving exhausted from his travels with a priceless bowl of mystical properties. He finds sanctuary in this little village and devotes himself to the care of the good folk therein. Refusing to give up his sworn protection of them and their source of life and well-being, their sacred well, he gets his head chopped off by the arriviste lord, who claims the land in the name of the King. So thereafter, up to the present day, our good, green and now headless knight is condemned to haunt the descending dynasty of the first, brutal lord – until the crime can be redeemed.
I’ve got six days to work it out before he, and I, can rest. Ha-ha.
