THAT THINKING
FEELING

Here are some thoughts on comedy from an expert. It is part of an interview on the 'Archive of American Television', which can be found at...

emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/jonathan-winters.

It's not quite verbatim, but almost. 

"I find an interesting thing with the word “funny”… “comic”… “hilarious”… “comedian”… I can make anybody funny. When I say “funny”… I can give you a funny look… not just makeup, red nose on you… some eyebrows… not just a clown thing… a funny little moustache… a goatee beard. I can give you a strange wardrobe… sleeves are too long… funny pants… shoes. I can give you schtick*… funny, little cane… à la Charlie Chaplin. But… the big thing I can’t do… I can’t make you think funny."

*‘schtick’ is a comic theme or gimmick. 

Jonathan Harshman Winters III, born in 1925, was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and artist. In a career spanning more than six decades, he appeared in hundreds of television show episode/series and films. 

He made his big screen debut in the 1963 classic comedy, ‘It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’. The cast also included Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jimmy Durante, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry Thomas, and Spencer Tracy, alongside Peter Falk, Don Knotts, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Carl Reiner, Jim Backus, and Leo Gorcey (in his first film appearance since leaving the Bowery Boys in 1956). 

There are cameos by Jack Benny, Ben Blue, Andy Devine, Paul Ford, Sterling Holloway, Jerry Lewis, Buster Keaton, Zasu Pitts, Carl Reiner, Arnold Stang, and the Three Stooges.

The great Stan Laurel was asked to appear, but had made a firm pledge to do no more acting roles after the death of his comedy partner Oliver Hardy. 

A devotee of Groucho Marx and Laurel and Hardy, Jonathan Winters died in 2013, at the age of 87.

So, there you go! In pantomime certainly, clothes, along with greasepaint, and wigs, do not maketh the man, the Dame, the Villain... or any other character.

Think about it!

THE LADY VARNISHES

From the BBC NEWS website, 22 November 2016…

"UK author Jeanette Winterson has helped school children re-imagine the fairy tale Cinderella for a new generation.

As part of the BBC's 100 Women season, she visited a primary school in the Cotswolds to discuss ways in which Cinderella is sexist and then asked the children to come up with their own version."

According to Wikipedia, one of the oldest known variants of ‘Cinderella’ is a Chinese fairy tale, about a young girl named “Ye Xian" or "Yeh-Shen" or “Yeh-hsien”, first published in a 9th-century compilation. She triumphs over her stepmother and stepsisters who are killed by flying stones.

Like the Western “Cinderella”, the heroine is a humble creature, who discharges the household chores and is subjected to humiliating treatment at the hands of her stepmother and stepsisters.

The form of the tale popular today is due to a retelling of this ancient tale by Charles Perrault, published in ‘Histoires ou Contes du temps passé’, published in Paris in 1697. Wikipedia recounts this version as the story of “a wealthy widower who married a proud and haughty woman as his second wife. She had two daughters, who were equally vain and selfish. The gentleman had a beautiful young daughter, a girl of unparalleled kindness and sweet temper. The man's daughter is forced into servitude, where she was made to work day and night doing menial chores. “

In 1878 the Cinderella story was told in Scotland under the name, ‘Rashin Coatie’. It tells of a king who had one lovely daughter, and whose wife had died. He married for a second time, an ill-mannered woman with three ugly girls of her own whose envy of the king’s daughter was matched by their treatment of her. They made her sit in the kitchen neuk, gave her a garment of rushes to wear, and allowed her nothing to eat but their leavings.

So... Cinderella’s tormentors are other members of the female persuasion! Am I wrong, or does that not fit the definitions of ‘sexist’?

Don’t get me started on the Wicked Queen in ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, Maleficent in Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the Wicked Witch of the West in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’, Cruella de Vil, in ‘101 Dalmatians’, the Queen of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’...

As Rudyard Kipling so neatly put it "The female of the species is more deadly than the male".

And there's more...

The National Theatre's production of Peter Pan features a female Captain Hook... ooo... what a clever idea, I bet you need at least a First-class honours degree in woolgathering to dream that one up.

What next? 'The Pirettes of Penzance'? 'Jessie Christ Superstar'? Ooops... there's me giving away good ideas for free again.

A bleated HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our reader!
Please forgive my tardiness, but I have been very busy... and you have no idea how difficult it is to get a budgie out of a treacle tart!

BLOWING

ONES

LINES

According to the BBC News website (9.1.2016) a certain Stacey (Chanelle Charlene) Solomon… who I must confess, I wouldn’t know if she fell out of a cornflake packet, on to my breakfast table… has incurred the ire of some panto punters by reading lines from a clipboard, whilst “playing” (my quotes) the role of Fairy Bowbells on the opening day of ‘Dick Whittington’ at Milton Keynes Theatre.

It is reported that Solomon's representative told the Daily Mail she had not had time to learn her lines or rehearse with the rest of the cast because she had been co-hosting ITV's 'I'm A Celebrity Extra Camp' in Australia. Nuff said!

Pantomime producer Kevin Wood is quoted as saying, "Stacey chose to take to the stage having just returned from the jungle as she didn't want to disappoint her fans by not appearing in the show. The script was a "prompt" to ensure the show ran smoothly, and she "should be applauded for her professionalism", he added. To quote Mandy Rice Davis (allegedly) "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

You think doing a pantomime is easy? It takes a lot of effort to come up with all the necessary excuses after a show like this is over!

Photographs of the event show that the clipboard was just a bog standard version with narrow strips of sparkly, sticky tape stuck across the top and bottom. Why not cover it with something fluffy or feathery, or… maybe just learn the lines?

Tickets for this tackiness cost on average, between £14 and £35.

If this should happen to anyone else in Pantoland, particularly if they are dealing with someone who is a legend before their time, I have written the following bit of dialogue to detract from the debacle...

BOWBELLS   I have just flown in from the land of Oz,

                     No… please… darlings…save the apploz!

                     Don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels,

                     And saying that… the fairy reels…

                     (REELS) Oooo…

                     Now that I’ve landed I’m feeling quite floored,

                     So here’s me lines… on this clipboard.

                     I'm hoping you’ll forgive me, just this once…

                     It’s jet lag… not ‘cos I’m a dunce!

                     CURTSEYS

This should be played over-the-top, and drum hits would enhance the reeling.

I well remember dear reader, that when I was in weekly rep I played the leading role in Molière’s ‘School for Wives’. The script was 100 pages long, I was on stage for 99 of those pages, and we did it in four-and-a-half day’s rehearsal. No clipboard, no prompter, just sheer "get out there" guts! That really was a wing and a prayer job. Ahhh... they don't write reminiscences like that anymore.

Clip Board and the Cribs... would have been a great name for a pop group in the sixties!

GETTING ON

I have referred to having seen pantomime Dames making an entrance on a mobility scooter, and also a skateboard. It wasn’t funny, and… it wasn’t funny! Presumably someone thought these were novel ideas. They weren't!

Also, I have expressed my dislike of these leading 'ladies' making an entrance dressed as a dining table, a Christmas cake, a football stadium, or in any other outrageous costume.

So… how do you make that all-important giant step for damekind? Let me count the ways…

You could make it fast or slow, silly or stately, dramatic or daft… it all depends on the character. Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere!

1. Stately/regal... providing of course it suits the character, or if the character might be somewhat pretentious (surely not!). To prick the balloon, you could put a comedy trip in there somewhere (see below)
2. Prima donna... soaking up the adulation, even if there isn't any.
3. Facing the wrong way... i.e., upstage... followed by a turn, being slightly startled, then a nervous laugh.
4. Prepare to say the first line then do a double take and peer quizzically at audience, just for reassurance that there are people out there, and they don't appear to be hostile. It's a throwaway, so make it quick.
5. Enter miming talking back to wings as though there has been some problem. Then spot audience, give a slight shock reaction, and have a quick preen before starting the dialogue.
6. Comedy trip... could be included in a normal entrance, followed by a nervous laugh. Again, it's a throwaway, so don't milk it.
7. Nervous... perhaps the most difficult to do, since you will probably be nervous anyway, but it needs to be exaggerated, although not overdone.
8. Superstar... shades of the prima donna as above, but with glitz galore. Maybe finish with a dismissive wave when the audience response is not ecstatic.
9. Jolly/friendly... lots of bounce, waving to audience.
10. Dramatic... very purposeful, but probably best to include a slight pause, followed by a shrug of realisation that things aren't as dramatic as all that.
11. Conspiratorial... with slight beckoning to the audience and quick glances off stage, to draw the punters into your little world.
12. Creep on secretively... then when down centre stage stop, have a quick think about what you are actually doing there, give a quick dismissive "what the heck" wave, and go into your spiel normally.
    
13. If you must have transport how about a sedan chair or litter, which the dictionary describes as ‘an enclosed or curtained couch mounted on shafts and used to carry a single passenger’ or, more simply, ‘a light bed or seat held between parallel sticks’. You might decorate it, and have curtains attached, from which your dameness could appear, seductively even. Obviously you will have to build a sturdy prop, and find some strong lackeys to do the carrying.
    
    Any doubts... leave it out. Collapse of stout party would not be funny. Maybe there could be fabric on each side, scraping the floor, so that madam could actually walk, hidden from view, with the lackeys grimacing under the apparent weight of course. Then when the litter is lowered to the ground, she is revealed in all her glory. If two porters can manage it, then Mrs. Fanackapan could proclaim... "What a carry on, eh? It's the only way to travel... by sedan. (POINTS TO LACKEY #1) This is Sid… (POINTS TO LACKEY #2) and this is Dan!" It would even work with a foursome, indicating just the leading lackeys.

There you are... a free gag, courtesy of G. Wizz! Am I good to you or am I good to you? Answers on a postcard to:  76 Sydney Green Street, St. Tesco, Scilly Isles.

Whatever entrance you use, its should of course match the dialogue in the script. G. Wizz is not encouraging anyone to ad-lib... never has, and never will!

COMEDY TRIP

No... it's not a day out at Custard Pie Park in Prestatyn! It's a bit of funny physicality, which is easy to execute, but difficult to describe.

During a normal walk, the left foot goes forward. As the right foot follows, it is turned sideways, and the front part of the right foot is dragged quickly against the heel of the left foot.

This is followed by an exaggerated pitch forward. Practice so that it can be done smoothly, to give the impression that it’s an actual trip.

Don’t look down at your feet whilst doing it. It’s the pitch forward that makes it work – Newton's third law: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’… or something like that.

I am very right-handed, perhaps if you are left-handed you might find it easier to strike the left foot with the right foot. Whichever way, try to make it look as natural as possible.

CROSS TALK

Here’s a joke:

“Did you take a bath?”

“Why, is there one missing?”

Horrible joke! Dean and I actually did that joke. And we made it work. Because we believed in it from the bottom of our hearts. Sometimes believing makes the difference. Jerry Lewis