Is there any job in acting that makes quite as many demands upon the individual as that of a pantomime performer? Probably not. While the rest of us are busy with pre-Christmas preparations, with school and work and present-buying, the panto star is almost certainly on a stage somewhere, hoofing it up in full costume before an audience of children in the grip of a manic sugar rush.
“Twelve shows a week, typically, sometimes more,” says Christopher Biggins, perhaps our most enduring panto icon – and who’s appearing this year in Robin Hood in Birmingham. “The average season is six or seven weeks, but the longest I’ve done was three months. Each show, we had to sing It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. We were still singing it at Easter.”
It sounds utterly exhausting, I tell him. “It is, and I do have to look after myself.” Biggins is 76. “I don’t go out like the other performers do afterwards anymore. They go out to dance; I go home to bed. I take my vitamins, and conserve my energy. But,” he adds, “I do love it. There is nothing like a pantomime. It’s just a joy.”
And a rather lucrative one, at that. “I was first approached to appear in one in 1976, and I said, ‘No, I don’t do panto, I am an actor,’” he says of his 28-year-old self, still new to the profession and much keener to play the Dane than a mere dame. “They kept asking, I kept saying no, and then they said: ‘Do you realise how much money it is?’ I’d no idea. They said, ‘Well, it’s £1000 a week,’ – a huge amount in those days – and so, yes, I did it for the money. But I’ve been doing it for love ever since.”
He’s presumably on much more than £1000 a week now? Biggins laughs out loud. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly say.”
There is good reason why most jobbing actors will ask of one another: “Are you working, darling?” This is because, very often, they’re not. It is a highly competitive field, and can make for an unreliable, haphazard career. Which is why panto retains quite such an appealing allure to them: guaranteed work, the thrill of the performance, and a temporarily regular salary.
An enduring family tradition, it’s also deserving of belated respect. Where certain actors once looked down upon it as a lower art form, now they very much don’t.
“After Ian McKellen did it [as Widow Twankey in the Old Vic’s production of Aladdin in 2004],” Christopher Biggins says, “suddenly everybody else thought: ‘Well, it must be OK.’ I once persuaded Simon Callow to appear in Aladdin alongside me [in 2006]. He’d never done one before, but absolutely loved it. And he was brilliant, too. So it suddenly became a good thing for great actors to do as well.”
The occasional McKellen and Callow aside, panto fundamentally remains a group effort. The above-the-title stars may help to sell tickets, but it’s the regular cast – those unsung heroes – that keep it oiled. Bob Golding, a professional actor for over three decades, has been the dame in his local St Albans theatre for the past 15 years.
“As actors, we try to have as varied a career as possible,” he says. The 55-year-old has appeared widely across children’s TV and theatre. “But,” he continues, “as much as you have a plan as a young actor, your career tends to lead you rather than you leading it.”
In other words, you may not necessarily choose panto above, say, a Hollywood movie, or the lead in a Sunday night BBC drama, but panto may nevertheless find you. And if it does, count yourself lucky. It’s honest work.
Golding did his first one in 1997. “It was three hours long, and three shows a day – a tough ask for anyone,” he recalls. He avoided them for the next dozen years, but heeded the call again in 2010.
He had, he says, his reasons. “On a cynical level, actors can look at pantomime as helping to pay their tax bill. Also, there is very little work at the beginning of the year; January is especially tough. So to earn good money a few weeks before can be crucial.”
Stage actors will often work for Equity minimum in theatrical productions (currently £12.21 per hour), but panto performers who hold principal roles can earn much more – around £6000 to 11,000 for a six-week run. “You can put another £10,000-20,000 on top of that, depending on your experience,” Golding says, “and if you’re a big name, then much higher still. Certain stars can command six figures easily.” Last year, Alison Hammond was reputed to have earned £200,000 for her stint in Peter Pan, while noted thesp Katie Price took home £50,000 for Cinderella.
The TV comedy legend, Lesley Joseph, 80, is also a mainstay of the circuit. She’ll be in Woking this month alongside Rob Rinder in Snow White. “I do it because it’s such fun,” she says. “It’s true that you don’t get to rehearse as much in panto as in other theatrical productions, but then that’s OK because you’re familiar with the genre. It’s more relaxed.”
As a result, things can occasionally go wrong. Joseph tends to recall the wardrobe malfunctions most. “I remember once in Cinderella throwing my cape off, and my wig going with it,” she laughs. “I was left there standing on stage with a pair of old stockings on my head. You couldn’t get away with that in Chekhov.”
Every star of pantomime will tell you that appearing in one is neither for the fainthearted, nor the ill-prepared. Nevertheless, productions have long indulged in the occasionally controversial practice of hiring famous faces simply for the sake of it, irrespective of their ability to act. Previous decades have seen celebrities as disparate as Frank Bruno, Ian Botham, and even the disgraced former Conservative politician Neil Hamilton and his wife, Christine. (This year, in London’s Islington, Jeremy Corbyn is appearing in one.)
“I remember doing Dick Whittington back in 1991, and we had Wolf from The Gladiators with us,” Joseph says. Wolf was no actor. “No, but he was rather wonderful, because he could move all his muscles in a way that Dorian, my character from Birds of a Feather, would absolutely love. And so I reacted to that, and it brought the house down.”
It does remain a very particular art form, with a proud tradition to uphold – of determined silliness, mostly. And it is therefore important, Golding says, that those who do sign up for it do so for the right reasons. Not all of them do.
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“A lot of Australian soap stars came over in the late 1980s not fully understanding what pantomime was. There was cynicism within the acting fraternity, thinking they were just coming for the money. I remember working with one particular soap actor, I won’t tell you their name, who said to me on day three of rehearsals, ‘I’ve done my job already – I’ve put bums on seats.’ I thought: ‘Just you wait and see what happens when you get out there in front of an audience!’ That’s totally the wrong attitude.”
Golding, currently in rehearsals to play Dame Dolly in Aladdin in St Albans – which requires being in costume and make-up for several hours each day – leans forward in his seat, and adjusts his glasses.
“This is hard work, you know? It can pay well, yes,” he concedes, “but you’ve got to put a shift in for panto, whoever you are.”
Christopher Biggins is starring in ‘Robin Hood’ in Birmingham this panto season; Lesley Joseph in ‘Snow White’ in Woking; and Bob Golding in ‘Aladdin’ in St Albans.
