Panto: Helping to keep the child within us alive

SOME people are blessed with an ability to distil years of life experience into tiny bite-sized advice. Producer, director, performer, teacher, and lecturer, Catherine Mahon-Buckley, is one such person.

She is also Artistic Director of CADA Performing Arts, on the executive board of Cork International Choral Festival, a member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Drama League of Ireland, and the Irish Film & Television Academy.

Chatting to Catherine about her production of the Beauty And The Beast panto, in the Everyman, I walk away feeling like I’ve been handed a nifty little road map to living a better life – and all before my morning coffee.

Catherine knows theatre. She has produced and directed 28 pantos for The Everyman and CADA and is very honoured to say she has never repeated a script during that time.

A lot has changed since she started out, she says, before reminding me during our chat that a comforting amount has stayed the same.

“We all want to laugh and nowadays it’s even more important for us to sit as a whole family and laugh together,” she said.

“The reason Shakespeare is still so beloved comes down to the fact that we haven’t really changed– his stories are all about our need to be loved and praised. His plays reflect human emotions and, really, they haven’t changed.”

In a similar way, Mahon-Buckley sees pantomimes as relevant.

Everybody loves a bit of slapstick. Pantomimes make us laugh and those simple pleasures are important. 

"I remember once my brother stayed up all night building some Scalextric thing for my nieces and nephews at Christmas. In the morning my mother arrived with some balloons. They were so taken with the balloons – blowing them up, bursting them, whatever - that all my brother’s efforts were completely dwarfed. Simple pleasures never get old.

“I remember when I started out. It was my first panto, and the board was suffering financially. I think we had about £300 in the bank. We had 24 people in the chorus and 14 people in the principal line-up. It was Cinderella and I had Jim Mulcahy and Paul Dennehy as the ugly sisters. They were fantastic and would walk down into the audience and around the place.

“We had so much freedom. I just can’t do any of that today. There are far more restriction and issues around insurance.”

Safety is a much bigger concern now, which she acknowledges as being a good thing.

“I think it was my fifth pantomime when we flew someone up over the audience. An expert came in and was consulted and everything. He checked the line and all the rest, but you just couldn’t do that so easily today. 

You would have to have huge discussions and meetings, and rightly so really.

The same caution must apply to the script, she says.

“These days, you must be really tuned in that you are not insulting anybody. Pantomimes are meant to be about having fun and telling a story, but I wouldn’t touch Babe In The Wood now, for example. I just wouldn’t dream of it.”

The seasoned director worries a little that the level of restriction on theatre may impact creativity.

“We must make sure that we’re not going too far. We must protect our creativity and our ability to laugh at ourselves. It is vitally important, whether you’re a child or an adult, to be able to laugh at yourself.

“If we can laugh at ourselves, we are emotionally mature and that allows us to weather the storms. If we become overly sensitive and ultra-aware, we risk losing that resilience and creativity.

“I would hate to think that we are returning to a puritanical era of theatre. That would be so grim and dire and depressing. 

I really would hate to think we are going back there.

Again, Mahon Buckley’s role as an educator comes to the fore in her consideration of scripts.

“Being a former secondary school teacher, I’m very aware, and very tuned in to the appropriateness of a script. If something gnaws at me, I pay attention to it. You must take it from ‘page’ to ‘stage’. It must read well and sometimes hearing it aloud changes the words completely.”

Consulting with actors is also hugely important, she says. She is delighted to work with so many creative and inspiring people and remarks that she doesn’t have all the answers. However, one thing she’s certain to avoid is scaring children. She remembers being terrified of the giant in Jack And The Beanstalk as a child herself.

To avoid frightening them, she often workshops ideas with her intended audience, the children themselves.

“When I did Jack And The Beanstalk, I asked them for their ideas. They devised having the giant as a teenager. It was his dad who was the nasty one. That character became the biggest hit of the show. He would come out to the children after each performance so they could take pictures with him. It was wonderful.”

She continues to listen to children when devising a show and relies on the teenagers in the cast.

“It’s remarkable how much things have changed. These teenagers genuinely wouldn’t know how to use an old-fashioned phone. They are the children of now, so we rely on their ideas.

“So, for example, in this production, the people are from Cork and the castle is stuck in the 1980s. Belle teaches them about the world in 2023 so we are very much reflecting on all the changes we’re experiencing.”

The original story is never lost, however.

“It’s important that we keep the story straight, so the children recognise it. The original story is like the tree stump. We go off on branches, but we always come back to the stump. We go back to slapstick because we know that, no matter what age, we all love to laugh.”

What strikes me, speaking to Catherine, is how much she cares for young people, and people in general.

“Children love farce; they go wild for it. But they also love when a show reflects the issues that affect their lives. 

We deal with those in subtle ways and try to pass on positive messages too.

“I do a lot of that in my drama work, offering young people opportunities to work through hypothetical situations, involving real life obstacles like bereavement and loss. I like to give them an opportunity to flesh out how they might cope in such difficult scenarios.”

The pantomime will also offer little life lessons, like the importance of reading.

“I’m doing a number with books because I am big on children reading books. There’s nothing nicer than holding a book in your hands. I saw a mother in a doctor’s surgery recently, going through a book with her toddler, and I wanted to praise her. Reading is so important, and Belle is big into reading.”

Mahon Buckley shares her worries that people aren’t reading enough in our fast-paced world, especially young people, but she still has every confidence that her pantomime will hold their attention.

“It is so important that we keep our child alive within us. Our pantomime celebrates that child inside. We all want to laugh. That will never change.”