TRADITIONAL OR TRENDY?

A few days ago it was announced that the BBC had beaten ITV in a bidding war for a new Saturday night talent show, ‘The Voice’, in a deal thought to be worth about £25m over two years. That equates to £32,876 per day, and we don’t even know if production costs are included!

The show, which made a “record-breaking debut in the Netherlands earlier this year”, airs on BBC One in 2012. Contestants will be aspiring singers drawn from public auditions.

"It's a big, exciting and warm-hearted series and will be a fantastic Saturday night event," said BBC One controller Danny Cohen. To quote Miss Mandy Rice Davis, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he!”

And now…courtesy of the amazing miracle of science… we take you back a couple of months or so, to a backroom at the BBC, where a meeting is being chaired by Mr. Big, the head honcho, the capo de tutti crapi. Seated around the table are assorted serfs…

MR. BIG: Item number one on the agenda… new programmes. Does anyone have any ideas?

There follows sixty seconds of shuffling, silence and sweating, until a pasty peon gingerly raises his hand…

PEON:  How about… a… talent show… sir?

The backscratcher bites his lower lip, holds his breath, and crosses the fingers of his other hand, which is hidden below the level of the table. The remainder of the retinue grimace and brace themselves. Slowly, a smile spreads across Mr. Big’s normally inflexible face…

MR. BIG: Well, bully for you, I say… bully! If that isn’t the kipper’s knickers, I don’t know what is! We’ll do it! It can’t fail… and even if it does, it’s not our money we’re spending, and anyhow, we’re not answerable to anyone as to how we spend it, and we don’t tell anyone how much we spend anyway… even if they try to invoke that… Freedom of Information whatchamacallit! Ha, ha, ha! Well done, young fellow me lad… I think a salary increase and promotion are definitely on the cards for you!

SLOW FADE ON THE REJOICING AND BACK SLAPPING

And what has all this got to do with pantomime?

I confess I wanted to get this grump out of my system, but for me, that indicates the trend in show business today, and it is what I consider to be a movement towards the banal, the lightweight, and the repetitive. In other words… dumbing down!

For some time now, I’ve have had the feeling that maybe some of the amateur theatrical societies putting on pantomimes, are allowing themselves to be influenced by the plastic presentations trundled out on the telly. I suspect they want to be trendy. Of course I may be wrong, but I’m not far from it!

During my 16 plus years as a full-time children’s entertainer, I made little concession to the trendy. Instead, I majored on entertainment. I reckoned the more modern technology there was, the better it was for me, presenting live entertainment with a wooden rabbit that ‘ran’ between two doors, and peeped out from behind one when I wasn’t looking… a teddy bear that popped up out of a box unexpectedly… a magic wand where a spider suddenly appeared on the end, causing me to jump back in surprise, mugging fear… and so on. This was all new to the kiddiwinks!

Even though I was using simple props, I was able to get the audience involved, generate a response from them, and interact with them. It was happening, as Big Hearted Arthur used to say, “Before your very eyes!” My job was fun! The vast majority of my bookings were the result of word of mouth. I did not have an agent, and the only ‘advertising’ I did was a free entry in Thompson’s Directory, and some A4 leaflets. Over all those years, I paid my bills, so I reckon I must have been doing something right!

In a previous blog I referred to pantomime having its roots in the Commedia dell'Arte. The Punch and Judy show also owes a debt to this form of theatre. It is where slapstick started. The gags are over 400 years old, but if you do them well, they still work. Aye, there’s the rub… if you do them well! It is possible, providing you know what you’re at, and you rehearse. Much easier of course, to make it up as you go along, bang in some references to television shows, and top it up with an attempt to copy the latest pop stars, whose singing comes courtesy of some computer software.

In the first (of only two) pantomimes in which I have appeared, I had to sing a duet with the young guy who played the (traditional) dame. Now, I sing so badly I even snap my fingers off key! The ‘dame’ informed me that he couldn’t sing either, but he said he could “put over a song”. That is what we did… both of us… and it worked. What the heck, it was comedy, not opera!

“The most difficult character in comedy is the fool, and he must be no fool who plays the part.” Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616

So… dare to be different, and trust in the traditional! Believe me… the future is not what it used to be.

CLASS ACT #2

For me, Jack Benny was a unique comedian, certainly as far as timing goes. He was a huge star, but on both his radio and television programmes he was always prepared to let supporting characters… in this case, band members… get laughs.

He once said, “It's not so much knowing when to speak, but knowing when to pause.”

Notice how everyone contributes to the comedy. No one overdoes it, and they obviously have confidence in the material.

The reference to Phil Harris was a running gag about the social habits of Benny's on-air orchestra, going back to his radio show. Harris who in real life, was married to Hollywood star, Alice Faye, for 54 years, and lent his distinctive voice to Disney animated features, including ‘The Jungle Book’, as Baloo, singing ‘The Bare Necessities’, was scripted as a hip-talking, hard-drinking, brash Southerner, who never met a bottle he didn't like or a mirror he could bypass. The musicians were consistently portrayed as a bunch of ne'er-do-wells, often being too drunk to play properly.

The young girl is Lynette Bryant, whose show business career never really got off the ground. Talk about deadpan! She is fantastic!