l’.—_____ ...... --
ABANAZAR IN
ALADDIN
V V ‘Audiences have changed. They are
less well behaved than twenty years ago '( the children, not the OAPs, who also make up a large part at the audience). ‘Heaven help you it you are playing in Manchester it Everton and United are playing away and reluctant children have been dragged along. lil
SCRDDGE IN A
CHRISTMAS CAROL
V ‘You can be just as evil-in a pair oi underpants and socks' asserts Gary Coakley, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at the Mitchell Theatre, Glasgow. A
dressing-room drama perhaps? As one
one Larissa—9:...
__ __EE6T_QR_w__,
have to run through the audience I wear
a cricket box,’ says Alan Curtis, Abanazer in Aladdin at the King's, Edinburgh. He had only threatened to
‘poison their ice-creams and steal their
Smarties.’ But he leels so stmngly about the importance oi the role oi the villain that he wrote one into Cinderella. The ugly sisters, without beauty, charm or a size 3 shoe, are now not bad enough either. All bosom and no viper.
who went to pantomimes as a child every year in Glasgow, and loved it, he
speaks with some conviction. He delights in the chance to be despicable and the paradoxical power it gives him with the audience. A sort ol treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen attair, a collective romance, in which outrage outwits ostracism.
~‘§"l\\¢k\\\~§§$§§§%‘
WIDDW FRANKEL IN
HANSEL AND GRETEL
> ‘Light me a lag, Kenny, would you? You don't mind smoke coming out at my ears do you?’ Anne Myatt, Widow Frankel in Hansel and Gretel at the Citizens, Glasgow, eyes emphasised by torked lightning make-up, turns to her wardrobe assistant and then the photographer, subject at menacing and withering stares at his own request. I began to teel responsible tor his weltare. She loved the part. ‘Oh yes, you get to look wonderiul' she says, llashlng diamanted lingers and leopard-skin leg-ol-mutton sleeves (disturbingly carnivorous implications tor a reputed child-eater).