The Fringe show charting 20 years of Scottish pantomimes

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

McKnight will not only be in full panto dame costume throughout the performances of his show 'She's Behind You,' but will be venturing off stage for audience interaction, and reinventing some of his favourite material for the Fringe.
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The show, which will see McKnight revive his hugely-popular Dorothy Blawna-Gale character, will explore Scotland's enduring love affair with panto and how it can be traced back to the country's music hall traditions.
It will also examine the dramatic changes the writer, director and performer has seen in the material performed on stage, audience tastes and attitudes, and how roles are cast.
Johnny McKnight is appearing in the National Theatre of Scotland show She's Behind You. (Image: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan) She's Behind You will also be partly autobiographical as McKnight his own personal relationship with his on-stage alter egos.
The late-night Traverse show, which has been jointly commissioned with the National Theatre of Scotland, has evolved from a talk delivered at Glasgow University less than 18 months ago.
Johnny McKnight is the star of the Fringe show She's Behind You. (Image: Ian Georgeson)
He had been invited to take part in a new lecture series instigated by former student John Tiffany, who would go on to become one of British theatre's most successful theatre directors, in honour of his former lecturer Alasdair Cameron.
McKnight recalled: 'When John and I started talking, the lecture was really going to be about the history of pantomimes. I started doing a lot of digging, but when I was about half-way through it just felt that it wasn't something that I would do.
'We really started off again and it became about my own history as a pantomime dame.
'I wanted to look back over the last 20 years at how Scotland has shifted, how comedy has shifted and how panto looks now compared to 20 years ago.
'The show is about being a panto dame and what panto has meant to me. It's become autobiographical and a theatrical show set in the world of panto.
'It's a bit of a surprise to both of us that it is even happening given that the original lecture was only meant to be a one-off thing.'
McKnight, who was brought up in Ardrossan in Ayrshire, can trace his panto story back to his first experience as an audience member when he was taken to the [[Ayr]] Gaiety theatre as a child.
He said: 'I remember being absolutely terrified when the dame come out in the audience.
'My favourite thing about panto is doing audience interaction stuff and terrorising people.
'There is something definitely weird that a therapist should probably to me about in that the thing I was most terrified about is the thing I love most about panto.
'I can still remember that feeling of danger of suddenly being part of the show.'
McKnight, who studied at the then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, got his first panto work at the Carnegie Hall, in Dunfermline, working with Scottish comedy writer and performer Tony Roper, who was directing its annual production.
He recalled: 'Tony was brilliant. We had 10 days to rehearse and he taught me everything. I really took it for granted at the time.
'After the first preview, he pulled me aside and said: 'I'll be back in a week. Don't you be saying these same words. You listen to the audience. Don't care about the rest of the actors on stage. This is for the audience. Keep it alive. Don't stick to the script.'
'I just assumed that's what you were meant to do in panto. He taught me so much.'
McKnight can recall the 'cultural appropriation' in the first versions of Aladdin he performed in and the male-dominated casts he appeared in, but also the impact on pantos of key political decisions, such as the legalisation of gay marriage in Scotland.
Tiffany, who started his theatre career working at the Traverse, said he had first developed an interest in Scottish pantomimes while he was studying in Glasgow
He said: 'I grew up in Yorkshire. Every year we would get on coach and go with my dad's company to see one of the big commercial pantos in Manchester.
'There would always be folk off the TV in them, like Cannon and Ball, or Little and Large.
'It was always great fun, but it was only when I moved to Glasgow, started studying theatre and went to the pantos at the King's Theatre with actors like Gerard Kelly that I realised it was an art form alongside the ones I was learning about.
'The pantos felt political – they punched up, instead of down. I became really interested in it as an art form.'
McKnight has worked extensively on the pantos at the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling and the Tron [[Theatre]] in Glasgow over the last 20 years.
He said: 'We take panto seriously in Scotland. Theatres that don't produce anything throughout the whole year still want to make a panto which is specific to their panto. Audiences that don't come out the rest of the year will all come out for that show.
'I think it comes down to the fact that our theatre history in Scotland is music hall, it's not Shakespeare.
'It feels like panto is embedded in our culture. It comes back to the fact that you're guaranteed a good night out. Good will triumph.
'The audience are there to have a laugh, they're there to have a good night out and have the previous year reflected back at them.
'The people on stage are there to make them laugh about crap stuff like the fear of welfare bills getting cut and sort of find a punchline for stuff that might be unbearable.
'I read so many articles about people saying had their night at the theatre ruined by people singing. When did we get so po-faced in a theatre so that singing has become a joyless activity? In panto, you want people to join in and shout out. You want it to feel anarchic and fun.
'I did an Adele song one year and the weans would all join in. I felt like Robbie Williams at Knebworth, although I didn't sound like him! The audience sing along because they love it, not because they're bored.'
Tiffany, a regular collaborator with the National Theatre of Scotland since he directed one of its first productions, Black Watch, is back working on a Traverse festival show for the first time since the award-winning play Gagarin Way - by the same writer, Gregory Burke, in 2001.
He said: 'I've taken work to a lot of festivals around the world since then. But there is just nothing to touch Edinburgh.
'When we knew there was going to do a three-week run of She's Behind You I said to Johnny that I wouldn't only do it if he actually learned the script!
'We're kind of taking all the accoutrements and transposing them into the world of the Fringe. There will be songs, call and response, shout outs, terrible old jokes and a lot of audience interaction.
'We have gone for a late-night slot. A slightly merry Traverse audience is going to be perfection for us.'
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