A Facebook friend of mine posted this panto bill earlier. Funny how certain pantos seem to have fallen out of favour. I'd never heard of Robinson Crusoe as a panto before. While other ones from my youth like Mother Goose and Babes in the Wood have fallen completely out of favour (Nottingham Playhouse are, as it happens, doing Babes... this year but it's being billed as ROBIN HOOD and Babes in the Wood). While others are now popular which were pretty much unheard-of in my childhood like The Snow Queen, thanks to the success of Frozen. I'm pretty sure our local theatre just has Cinderella, Aladdin and Jack and the Beanstalk on a three year loop.
And they only last barely a month even in the biggest cities these days. I saw the record holder for longest panto in history at Nottingham Theatre Royal as relatively recently as the very early 1980s (Keith Harris with Orville & Cuddles and Barbara Windsor. Can't remember who was the dame in that one, it was either John Inman or Barry Howard from Hi-De-Hi, I saw them both) which started on Boxing Day and finished just before the following Easter.
And was Hughie Green creaming off the most popular acts from Op Knocks?
3 comments:
I remember seeing Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog in Panto many moons ago. It had some bellend from Coronation Street too - he was ripped to pieces. Not literally; though he should've been.
We hillbillies didn't have pantos in our town, but I remember a couple of school trips down to Inverness to see pantos at Eden Court. Oof, we're talking D List celebrities BA, way below what you saw in Nottingham. I remember they had some ex-music hall comedian that nobody in the school had heard of. Imagine a third division Andy Cameron. Looking back, he'd probably pissed off all the theatre owners in Glasgow and Edinburgh and ended up having to go north to entertain the yokels.
John - Spit the Dog: great act, that. Did Bob do Houdi Elbow as well?
Mr Hawkfall - The panto prior to the Keith Harris one was Babes in the Wood with The Krankies. Looks like us in the East Midlands were getting the panto turns that were yours by right. What's that you say? We were welcome to The Krankies? Well!
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