Another 'acciduurnt' waiting to happen at Theatre Royal
Danny and Clive fine-tune panto 20
Beaming down from the Theatre Royal’s seasonal panto banners are four familiar faces – those of comedy double act Danny and Clive, panto dame Chris Hayward and singer Joe McElderry.
For Danny and Clive (Adams and Webb respectively: different surnames, same lineage being father and son, though not in that order), this year’s Aladdin is a notable achievement.
It’s their 20th Theatre Royal panto in succession (and the landmark would have been reached last year had it not been for the Covid theatre shutdown in 2020).
Nobody could have predicted that marathon run, surely not even theatre genius Michael Harrison who saw them in Stoke and hired them as the comedy element of the panto he was to produce in Newcastle the following season.
He was taking a punt. They were relative unknowns in 2005, having no TV profile at all.
It was North East actress Jill Halfpenny, cast as the Fairy Godmother, who was exciting everyone. She had been in EastEnders and won Strictly Come Dancing, and of course she was lovely.
But Danny and Clive smashed it, stealing most of the scenes in a Cinderella that might not have been textbook fairytale but which they made the vehicle for their anarchic slapstick comedy.
I was there with my daughter for that 2005 debut and she was in a pre-teen strop.
One silly giggle from Danny, even before he appeared on stage, and she was away, laughing helplessly until the end.
That gilt-edged giggle, incidentally, like his catchphrase cry of “Acciduurnt”, has become a Theatre Royal panto staple.
After the first year’s somewhat tentative billing, Danny and Clive returned in 2006 for Jack and the Beanstalk, their names still beneath Jill’s but delighting audiences again.
For Aladdin in 2007, Jill having bowed out, the pair had top billing and the Theatre Royal has presented a Danny and Clive panto ever since with box office records routinely broken.
And this week they let the media in to watch a rehearsal, an invitation not without jeopardy as we discovered when Danny gleefully unleashed a jet of foam in our direction.
He could hardly miss… and didn’t!
Close up, you can see the work that goes into one of these shows, the dancers warming up surely to the point of exhaustion (press-ups, jumps and jogging on the spot to an unforgiving beat). But that was just them getting ready.
Then the vocal exercises: “Mah, mah, mah, ah ha ha ha ha.”
Joe McElderry, who will be the amiable butt of many jokes, sports butterfly wings as The Spirit of the Ring. And he gets things going by singing of the achievements of Danny and Clive: “What amazing memories they’ve given us all of laughter and fun.”
Danny chimes in, flirting with danger as ever: “Twenty years and we’re still doing the same old sh… ow!”
Even in a rehearsal room without technical special effects, the first act is hilarious… just like Circus Hilarious, the big top show which keeps Danny and Clive going during the summer.
And while the pair are the hub around which all revolves, they have other stalwarts to support them, including Mick Potts, Clive’s other son and Danny’s half-brother, as the lugubrious Genie of the Lamp and Wayne Smith as Old King Cole.
Afterwards in his dressing room, Danny explains the importance of casting performers who ‘get it’, who can take the mayhem and mess.
“Not everyone can,” he says.
Rachel Stanley, expansive and energetic as The Wicked Witch, and Billie-Kay, recruited from last year’s Birmingham Hippodrome panto cast to play Princess Jemima, clearly passed the test.
What might be called Danny’s leading ladies (remembering one who had to be knocked backwards off a wall) require resilience as well as stamina and stagecraft.
Danny, an adopted Geordie since settling in the North East, explains how their panto approach has evolved in response to audiences.
“We only did it in the smashed crockery routine,” he says of his sheepish cry of ‘Acciduurnt’.
“But it always got a laugh so we started using it in other scenes too.”
I remember once hearing a small boy utter it on a London-bound train. And Danny recalls a workman who came to his house and on dropping a tool absent-mindedly went: “Acciduurnt!”
“Where did you get that from?” Danny asked him.
At which point the man’s face lit up in sudden recognition. “Hey, you’re that panto bloke.”
Dad Clive, who hails from Sunderland, takes even more stick from Danny than Joe McElderry. He’s not far off octogenarian status but still a key member of the team.
Asked during the break if he recalls any stand-out moments from 19 Newcastle pantos, he deadpans: “No, can’t remember any of them.
“Three weeks after this one finishes I won’t remember what this one was about.”
And how does he prepare himself, mentally and physically, for each performance?
“Three pints should do it.”
Chris Hayward, surrounded by frocks and wigs in his dressing room, attributes the pair’s success to one key factor: “They’ve just got funny bones.”
A seasoned panto dame, Chris is stepping out as Mother Goose in his 18th Danny and Clive panto. He missed the first two but Michael Harrison signed him for number three, meaning he had to say no to Sunderland Empire who wanted him as an Ugly Sister.
“I think we just need an audience now,” he says after the morning’s run-through.
Born in Newcastle, Chris went to London at 18 and forged a career as a dancer, appearing on stage with Danny La Rue among others, until he turned to the wardrobe side of showbusiness.
For years he made all his own panto frocks and wigs (proudly he shows me one of this year’s creations, a dress in Newcastle United stripes).
Now back in on home turf, he’s part-time panto dame and full-time carer for his elderly father, and somewhere in Walker is the storage unit containing his accumulated flamboyant finery.
He’s enjoying being back with the team and the greasepaint.
“We all know how each other works. Wayne’s been here nine years now.
“You go into rehearsals and there’s not a lot of direction. Michael will say do this or that. They’re all good panto performers.
“It’s when someone’s not a good panto performer that it gets a bit hard. You can’t really teach someone to do a pantomime performance because it’s just in you. It’s a different energy from doing a musical or a play. It requires massive energy.”
For now, he’s looking ahead to 12 shows a week for eight weeks, three on Saturdays which sounds a little mental.
“I actually prefer it,” says Chris, 61 now.
“I’ll do the first show, have a lie down (there’s a bed in the dressing room), a cup of tea and maybe a snack, and the adrenalin’s still there for the second.
“Mind, after the evening show I go home and I’m dead!”
All, though, will go home with laughter and applause ringing in their ears. It’s guaranteed.
And as for anyone calling it a day, next year’s Danny and Clive panto has already been announced – it’s Jack and the Beanstalk again, for which tickets are already on sale.
Aladdin, though, opens on Tuesday, November 25, and runs until January 18 next year. Tickets from the Theatre Royal website or call 0191 232 7010.
Here, meanwhile, is a run-down of Danny and Clive’s mould-breaking Newcastle Theatre Royal pantos… so far!
2005 Cinderella
2006 Jack and the Beanstalk
2007 Aladdin
2008 Robinson Crusoe
2009 Cinderella
2010 Robin Hood
2011 Sleeping Beauty
2012 Aladdin
2013 Jack and the Beanstalk
2014 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
2015 Dick Whittington
2016 Cinderella
2017 Peter Pan
2018 Goldilocks and the Three Bears
2019 Beauty and the Beast
2021 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
2022 Cinderella
2023 Pinocchio
2024 The Little Mermaid
2025 Aladdin