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The Christmas decorations have been packed away, kids are back at school and new year resolutions are already forgotten. It’s the middle of January and the festive season is well and truly over – but not in panto-land. Pantomimes are still running in Liverpool, at the city’s Royal Court and Everyman theatres, and at Theatr Clwyd in Mold, among other venues. But does panto feel different once the Christmas holidays have ended and might it serve another purpose amid the January gloom?
Nottingham Playhouse’s Sleeping Beauty runs until this weekend, closing just before Blue Monday which is supposedly the most depressing day of the year. John Elkington is playing Nelly the Nanny in the show and has been Nottingham’s dame for almost 30 years. He says that for audiences who come in January, perhaps after being cooped up at home, “it’s something to look forward to” and one more treat after Christmas. “It feels like an extension for the children, keeping the fun up: you know, ‘there’s still the panto to go to!’ Our audiences are very loyal and supportive. Just because we’ve come into the new year and we do fewer shows – six a week rather than the 12 a week we do before Christmas – our job is to keep up the energy, not let it slip.” It’s a demanding gig – Elkington only gets to put his feet up on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
About 40,000 people visit the Nottingham Playhouse panto each year. Elkington says the audiences are “bigger and more animated” in the run-up to Christmas and that they do thin out afterwards. There are also more relaxed and access performances in January, designed for smaller audiences and adapted to be quieter. Throughout the run, Elkington approaches each show as if his whole family is in the front row.
The riotous last night of the Nottingham panto, when the crew play tricks on the cast, has built up such a reputation that audiences who have already seen the show come back a second time. “They’ve seen it as it should be and then they come that night as well – anything can happen,” says Elkington, remembering the year there were 15 crew members and three of the band on stage and “an enormous pillow fight erupted”. Nottingham Playhouse is one of the few theatres to put its panto online – Sleeping Beauty, written and directed by Playhouse boss Adam Penford, is available on demand until Saturday night, when the final performance takes place.
At Liverpool’s Royal Court, The Scouse Christmas Carol was originally due to close this weekend but it has been so popular that it will now run until 24 January. It is not only one of the country’s last Christmas pantos to close but was one of the first to open, back on 7 November.
“For most people, the panto is about leading up to Christmas,” says the theatre’s executive producer, Kevin Fearon, who is also the writer of the production, directed by Mark Chatterton. Many of those booking for January, Fearon says, will be coming because they were unable to secure seats for December. Audience demand is especially high for tickets for the stalls where you can be served a meal at your table before the show. This dining option is a popular feature at the Royal Court throughout the year. “People want to come out with their families and have a party, have a meal.”
The panto is “our perfect show of the year”, he says, as it captures what the Royal Court is all about: “great entertainment with a great atmosphere in the room – 100% of everything”. In the cold of January, when the days are short and people are back at work, it’s a chance for a big night out to lift your spirits. The cost of living has led to some theatregoers reducing their trips to the Royal Court over the year but people remain committed to the panto, says Fearon. The audience often builds for the final weeks as word of mouth spreads. “We’ll take around £1.4m in ticket sales plus food and drink. That counts for more than half of our ticket sales for the year – it funds the rest of the year.” Within weeks of the panto closing, the team will have picked the title for the next show and started work on it. “People decide to bring more friends and family each year. We need to keep living up to previous years. There’s an expectation.”
Like the Nottingham Playhouse panto, any references to Christmas are usually tweaked or taken out for the later performances of the Royal Court panto but that wasn’t an option with their mischievous take on A Christmas Carol. “It’s the first time we haven’t changed the last song of the show,” says Fearon. In Nottingham, the panto usually ends with a Christmas tune – during January this is swapped for a reprise of another number in the show.
But some pantos aren’t designed for Christmas at all. Brick Lane Music Hall in east London is opening Jack and His Giant Stalk on 22 January and it runs until 7 March. Described as “a pantomime for grownups”, not as rude as the increasingly popular adult pantos, the show is written and directed by Lucy Hayes. It’s the second panto she has created for the venue after, ahem, Pinocchio and his Wooden Whopper.
“We do a Christmas variety show with carols and all that jazz,” she says. “They used to do that for two weeks and then a panto for two weeks. But Christmas is the most popular time of the year so they were starting the Christmas show a week earlier, in November, and extending the panto for a week into January and they were selling and selling and selling. At least 10 years ago, they thought: what if we put the Christmas show on before Christmas and then the panto afterwards?”
It has become, says Hayes, “its own tradition”. For many people, panto is about anticipating the holidays. What does a January-to-March pantomime offer? “Christmas is such a busy period, with seeing family and so on, people may have more time afterwards,” she says – and they may “need more cheering up, lifting out of the blues”. Their panto is “very fun and silly and celebratory – we go all-in on that”. Like the Royal Court, the venue serves food before the show – either an afternoon tea or a meal in the evening – and many of the audiences at the 180-seater have their own tradition of when they come during the run.
Brick Lane Music Hall was founded in 1992 by her father, the performer Vincent Hayes, who she is now directing in the show. She remembers the joy of panto from her childhood: “I thought it was so exciting that as an audience member you could go up on stage. That blew my mind. I was always the brat who put their hand up, desperate to go on … I felt like it was for me because I was invited into it, which was different to the West End or a play.”
There are companies that perform pantomime at other times of the year, especially in Easter and half-term holidays. Even spooky ones are put on for Halloween. But Brick Lane Music Hall stands out for opening its panto right after most have just closed. “People are often surprised but they’re won over when you explain it to them – it is a fun idea,” says Hayes. It also means, of course, less competition for an audience than you’d find during the panto-stuffed month of December. “We’ve made our own market,” she says with a laugh.
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Sleeping Beauty is at Nottingham Playhouse and online until 17 January. The Scouse Christmas Carol is at the Royal Court, Liverpool, until 24 January. Jack and His Giant Stalk is at Brick Lane Music Hall, London, 22 January-7 March.
