The giant takes a lumbering step forward, her arms swinging heavily like battering rams. There’s a screeching cackle as Robbie Abbott tries to find the right lever to make the giant blink. “That’s her mouth!” Emily Wood shouts from the warehouse floor-turned-walkway, and Abbott rushes to lift the giant’s jaw—just as Wood leaps in to avoid being knocked over by a huge fist.
Located on muddy land rented from a farmer in Kent, this Grade II listed corrugated iron warehouse is a Christmas cave full of pantomime treasures. Although his normal role is that of workshop assistant, Abbott will soon be stomping down from a beanstalk onto the stage of the Grove Theater in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. “I’ll keep practicing,” he beams. Nearby, a calm velvet unicorn watches unperturbed.
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 headquarters of pantomime powerhouse Evolution Productions. In addition to their woodworking, costume and painting studios, it houses 20 different sets, each taking up two trucks worth of storage space. Wood runs the company with her husband, Paul Hendy, who writes, directs and produces, and who she fondly describes as ‘absolutely obsessed’ with panto. Once the shows start, they watch each of their pantos every week for the entire run.
This year they are doing 10 shows, from Sheffield to Shrewsbury, with the Marlowe Theater in Canterbury being the largest. Our photographer is stunned by how excited I am to see Marlowe’s famous bank from the iconic ghost gag scene, a mainstay of the venue’s panto. At some point in each show, usually in the middle of a chase, the cast takes a break on this old wooden bench, where they are picked off one by one by dancing ghosts. It’s a scene I’ve been hoarsely watching with my family for years, and a scene beloved by Marlowe loyalists. They tried to replace the bank for a year and there were practically riots. “Well,” Wood and I sing in giddy explanation, complete with knee-slapping and arm-waving, “we’ll have to do it again, won’t we? Oops!”
The company was founded in 1982 by Wood’s parents as Kevin Wood Productions. Then Wood and Hendy bought it in 2005. At the end of the warehouse’s long main room, a giant yellow eye peers out from a green scaly head. “That’s Kevin,” Wood says. ‘Kevin the Kraken and Helga the Dragon.’ She points to another being 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 led by Michelle Marden, who keeps an essential box of ‘beanstalk repair materials’ in her office. We see her marking the front of a joke shop in the paint room. It is one of the last pieces created before the set heads to the Marlowe for Aladdin. The paint shop has giant decor pieces balanced on wooden frames and the walls are lined with boxes of every color of glitter 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 make sure it lasts,” Marden reveals, touching the glittering frame of a magic mirror to test whether it’s still sticky. “We want it to be bulletproof.”
A modern pantomime tends to tell one of the few varying stories, with Aladdin being one of the most popular. But with its orientalist depiction of a vague and mystical East, often performed by mainly white casts, the show rightly arouses controversy. Replacing the Victorian setting of a cartoonish Chinese laundromat with a joke shop is part of Evolution’s desire to remove any crude, racist ideas from the show. “You don’t want anyone to have a terribly stereotypical Chinese accent or appearance,” Wood says bluntly, “but the story isn’t problematic. Those figures of speech are.”
In the production of Marlowe, starring Strictly’s Kevin Clifton, the show has moved from China to a mythical land, like that of Snow White. “We thought, let’s remove anything that could be offensive,” Wood says. “Let’s bring it back and hopefully Aladdin can continue for the next 20 years.” In addition to increasing diversity in their casting, they asked a sensitivity reader to go over the script. “It’s easy for me to make assumptions here as a white woman,” Wood acknowledges. “We wanted to have those conversations with people who are much more informed.”
Further on in the woodshop, a pirate flag hangs proudly on the wall, a remnant from an old production of Peter Pan. Jon Marsh stops sanding and pulls out a dusty blueprint from under a pile of power tools. He came here after working at the Marlowe, and now his life is 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 all the children, you hear them chatting. It’s a bit of magic.”
At the next table, Marsh’s father, Kevin, is splitting the wood for Marden’s joke shop. “A cow sticks its head through that,” he says, pointing with his saw. He is quite new to the workshop. “In January I came to refurbish some steel planks and I have been here ever since.” It’s a well-known story; Marden started here with work experience and never left. Later I meet Ali Gray in the wardrobe, with a measuring tape around her shoulders. Having been laid off not long before, she took her dog for a walk near the warehouse, saw a sign about a costume sale and eventually got a job.
Pantomime has graced British theaters since the early 18th century, but only since the twentieth century has it taken on a form recognizable as what we perform today. The joke-filled music productions have become a crucial part of the theatrical ecosystem. “Pantomime provides around a third to a half of a theatre’s income throughout the year,” explains Wood, “so if a theater can have a good panto season it either gives them a bit of financial security or they can use to put on shows that are more experimental, but don’t sell as much. This way they can offer variety.”
Despite the need for the industry and its unique ability to attract every generation of a family to the theatre, panto is often looked down upon. “I think people used to get away with sub-par shows,” Wood believes. “You can see that there is a lot of work and investment here. We try to put on a really good quality show. But there was a period when people didn’t do that and shows were tacky and rude. That’s just cheap comedy. But the world changed a bit when Ian McKellen started doing panto and some of the more serious actors said, ‘Yes, it’s OK to do it.’” Thirteen shows a week – two shows a day, three on Saturdays – is no easy feat . . “It’s really tiring work.”
To absorb sweat, they use armpit pads stuck into costumes. Fortunately, these are washed after every show
To withstand the stress of putting them on and taking them off 13 times a week, panto costumes must be hardy. “Vodka!” says Nikki Weston, waving a pair of scissors, as we walk into the costume department. The costumes all get a good dry cleaning at the end of each run, but until then they are only cleaned with vodka. “When you come back in January, everything stinks.” The bizarre outfits are made from so many different materials that a normal washing machine would eat them and spit them out all wrong.
Instead, they are given a spritz of the spirit mixed with water and Zoflora, a concentrated disinfectant. “It’s a recognized thing across the industry,” says Weston. “The same goes for ballet. You can’t wash a tutu.” To absorb the worst of the sweat, they use sweat pads under the armpits that are stuck into their costumes. Fortunately, these are washed after every show.
Pointing to boxes piled high in another storage room, Wood says, “They must all have been used”: rat boots, hip 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 she has passed on from her mother, who started out in a traditional repertory theater and worked in Scarborough with Alan Ayckbourn. It goes beyond the shows; above the warehouse toilets hang lights from Captain Hook’s boat, which glow red when turned on.
Wood rummages through a box labeled “Diamonds.” “What would someone think if he tried to rob the place?” she asks with a laugh as she pulls out a glittering blue gem rescued from the lair of an evil villain. She looks around at the pumpkins, the plungers, the oversized ostrich. “We just have a lot of weird stuff.”
• Jack and the Beanstalk is at the Grove Theatre, Dunstable until December 31. Aladdin is at the Marlowe Theater in Canterbury until January 7.