What's on in London: Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story
He's behind you!
If an adult pantomime is part of your festive season traditions, you'll probably want to check out Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story.
This is a fun night out. Even if you're new to the tradition of pantomime, this classic combination of bawdy humour, music and dance, and a reimagining of a classic tale is accessible and entertaining.
Setting the story in Scotland, the show has been written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper, and is directed by Andrew Beckett. The cast for this production includes Matt Kennedy, Keanu Adolphus Johnson, Laura Anna-Mead, Matthew Baldwin, Chris Lane, Dani Mirels, Ben Mabberley, Owen Arkrow, and Olivia-Grace Weaver.
It's an energetic cast that embraces the art-form. Like any panto, it helps if you approach this show with the intention of having a good time. Don't overthink it, just let yourself have a good time and a fun night out.
Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story will run at the Charing Cross Theatre from 21 November until 11 January
Jon Bradfield on How To Date Men
For our podcast, How To Date Men, we caught up with John Bradfield for a behind-the-scenes look at the show.
In the conversation we talk tropes, community, and bringing to life the world of Lickmanochers.
What's your creative process when you're sitting down to write a new Panto?
The starting point is what story we're going to do. We try and keep roughly within the canon of pantomime stories. So it's what haven't we done for a while? What is a nice contrast to the previous year? This year it's a version of Beauty and the Beast - it's called Beauty and the Beast: a Horny Love Story.
We hadn't done it for a while, and we thought we wanted a show that felt actually festive. Most pantomimes, they're not set at Christmas. It's a very Christmassy thing, but we thought we wanted something a bit frosty and actually set in the wintertime and a bit snowy.
The next thing we often think of is the setting, because our shows are quite world specific. So it's set in a little hamlet on the very north tip of Scotland called Lickmanochers. And we thought that'll give us a bit of snow and a bit of atmosphere.
If you choose a specific world to set it in, that then helps set up who the characters might be. Our dame in this show runs the northernmost petrol station on the British mainland - that then gives you a setting for her home world and the characters' home world. It gives you specific things you can bounce off to create jokes and story.
Are there specific panto tropes that you need to tick the boxes on - like the Dame character? Is it a bit of a jigsaw recipe that you've got to somehow fit all these things in?
It definitely is. You definitely want something sort of "he's behind you" with a ghost or a baddie appearing - we always do that. We always have a sing-a-long for the audience. Lots of breaking the fourth wall. You want a proper villain who's a villain from start to finish. You want a good fairy or a similar kind of character who welcomes the audience. You want a bit of slapstick. You maybe want to spray the audience with water at some point - all of that chaos.
The thing with Beauty and the Beast is that it was a popular panto and it dropped out of fashion. And then really since the Disney cartoon, it's become a real staple again. And it's not really shaped like a pantomime - it sort of narrows down to being a romcom - you've got two people who shouldn't be falling in love with each other, trapped in the space, right? S
How did you get involved in pantos?
The first piece of live theatre I saw was a pantomime at the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre.
But how I started writing them was that I was a member of a gay running club called the London Frontrunners. Someone had the idea of doing a mini pantomime for the Christmas party entertainment. I worked in theatre marketing. Myself and Martin decided to write it. Over the years, the shows were getting longer and longer. We started sending the script off to theatre producers. We began staging our pantomimes at the Above the Stag theatre and ended up setting up our company.
Beauty and the Beast is in a panto that's aimed at adults - is that a different challenge to writing a family-friendly version?
I haven't written a kid's pantomime, but writing for adults certainly leaves you more range for humor - we can still put in all the silly puns and daft slapstick and all that if we want, which you'd have for children, but you can also put all the adult stuff in.
Sex is a kind of taboo humor still. But sex is also a semi-private thing - it has vulnerabilities with it. You can play with the anxiety of the characters around that. You can find the humor in that and a bit of empathy and pathos, as well as the sheer joy of having a nice ballad that has references to rimming or whatever, you know?
Does the show evolve at all during the run? Are you on the lookout for current news events or pop-culture moments that can be incorporated into the show as it progresses?
Occasionally that does happen, but it's not a driving force for us.
Panto is always for a community. Oour local community is the queer world - the gay world, right? So you want those points of reference, but what we've found is that if you just shoehorn them in, you end up feeling like you're watching, Have I Got News For You?
For our tastes, that stuff has got to spring out of the story. If a reference suggests itself because of what's happening with the character, then it's funnier because you go, that's clever. Whereas just shoehorning them in for an easy laugh we kind of steer away from.
Beyond the panto, what are some of your Christmas traditions? Do you go crazy for Christmas?
What I don't get, which a lot of people get, is that magic moment of: "I'm feeling it now." That's because we're working on the panto for a long time.
I also sing in a choir, and our Christmas concert is usually the first weekend of December. So I've been rehearsing Christmas music for weeks.
So, by like the second week of December, I'm like, get me on a train out of here.
This year, I'll be going up to Edinburgh which is where all my family have ended up settling.
Are you already thinking about the show for next year?
We know the story that we're going to do, which is Cinderella. We know it's going to be called Cinderella: Buttons Undone.
Buttons is this sort of sidekick friend character. But we want him to have a slightly more central disruptive role this year with the story not going where you'd think it would go. And we're going to set it in a sort of Brighton-like seaside town - a bit of a rundown but colorful seaside resort. But we don't know much more than that. We need to have a solid first draft by halfway through the year.
What do you hope that people feel when they come along to see Beauty and the Beast?
Transported and delighted. We absolutely want to take people on a journey from that seat in a theater in cold winter London to somewhere unexpected and magical. And we want them to feel belonging - panto speaks to a community and you want people to feel totally embraced by it. I want them to feel happy, right? It's just joy - that's what you're trying to give people.
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