BEHIND THE SCENES: Aladdin, The New Wimbledon Theatre

Harriet Humphries

I met up with Mark Jones, publicist for New Wimbledon Theatre, to discuss the role of casting in pantomimes and to see whether dads across London have shown more enthusiasm than ever before for that annual trip normally championed only by the missus, the kids and the in-laws!

A lot of the press attention surrounding your pantomime Aladdin this year is centred on your casting - how significant is this?

Casting for panto is the most important part. First Family Entertainment (FFE) who produce our shows have twelve theatres up and down the country - that's twelve different panto casts that they have to find. It's quite difficult! So you get the people that they've always used but we tend not to repeat our panto cast. I think being the only London theatre we get an advantage.

You've got some great family names and a couple of newbies to the panto scene - can you tell me what you're expecting from them?

Paul [Paul O'Grady] is a chat show king at the moment, so popular and so accessible. Anita's [Anita Dobson] brilliant, she's been here before, a really lovely lady, and people do tend to latch on to those kinds of people. I'm eager to see Pamela because it's like, "that's so weird, you were on
Baywatch and now you're in my local theatre," and with Ruby [Ruby Wax] it's the same kind of thing, people know her from the 80s and comedy sketch shows and they just want to see her in that different environment. It was a very funny Monday afternoon when we found out Pamela was doing it!

Well, that is pretty spectacular to have her! Was Pamela contacted herself? How did that work?

Basically, here at Wimbledon we were the first panto to have an American cast member and so we had Henry Winkler, who made his debut here, what, three, four years ago now.

He's become a bit of a veteran, hasn't he? Isn't he starring somewhere else this year?

He is, he's doing Liverpool with Les Dennis. He just suddenly fell in love with panto whilst he was here. He played Captain Hook and absolutely loved it. He's just become a campaigner across the states for FFE. And Pamela's agent is British and he understood panto, as I think we all do in this country, we've grown up with it. So he explained the genre to Pammy and then Henry Winkler rang her up and said, "You have to do this, it's so much fun, you will love it."

Considering the controversial nature of some of Pamela's adult image, has the public reaction been as positive as in the past?

Erm, I would say 99 per cent positive. I've had so many press ringing me up saying "Is this a hoax?" It's like no, one of the most famous women in the world is doing panto. Erm, there's been perhaps a little bit of concern that she might not be that suitable...

Yes, I mean, theProduction Company even has "family entertainment" in its title and traditionally this is what pantomimes are all about, so was there a concern here?

My argument would be that we would never do anything to put our reputation at risk, and it is a family show, a traditional panto, and yeah, she had a former more adult line of work, shall we say, but that doesn't belong on our stage.

Saying that, it's quite interesting to see that in your poster you've used quite a provocative picture of her.

I see what you're saying, but to be honest it's just one of her approved head shots!

Were they all like that?!

That's the only one I've seen, but I can't stress enough that it will be a family show! I mean, she's got a cracking sense of humour...

I wondered what you were going to say there! "A cracking..."

I know! I have had to be so careful what I say sometimes, honestly not good!

So you said this is the first time you've used guest casting. How is this affecting the scripts? I would assume each different star would want to put some of their own personality into the role.

As far as I know they all have the core script, because we've got the core cast, but where the genies concerned they're going to fast track it as much as possible, so they'll all have the same format, the same speed, but I guess they'll have separate in-jokes or kind of funny things that they do, Baywatch references and that sort of thing. I think they're all getting different songs as well. I think Paul wants to do the one from the Aladdin movie, the one the genie sings, which will be quite cool.

Obviously with theatre's live nature there are always concerns about unexpected emergencies. Are there any contingency plans for if the stars do drop out?

There will always be understudies. I mean, they possibly won't be a named name but with every ticket we book it's under the condition that, you know, subject to availability. If someone was to get sick and not be able to do it the show must go on, it's just one of those givens. Last year we had Cinderella and our Buttons was a ventriloquist who got laryngitis and so our producer Kevin Wood stepped in! He was on the book and everything but he filled the role, and the audience
still loved it because it was just part of the spectacle, that "wow, someone's sick, what's going to happen" and it's still panto. Yeah, he's reading from the script but he's still getting into the spirit of
it which is what panto's all about. Saying that, let's hope no one gets sick!

Aladdin opens at the New Wimbledon Theatre on Friday December 4 and runs until Sunday January 10.

 

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