From Polly Lister playing a dozen characters in Scarborough’s Snow Queen to Tom Binns’s solitary Buttons, one is fun for 2020’s pantomimes
‘The length of each act should be the length of a child’s bladder,” Polly Lister laughs. “You never want it to spill over.” Due to Covid restrictions, panto dames and the back-ends of horses have been stuck without a stage this Christmas, but some theatres have found a way to keep the panto magic alive. Working within the restrictions of social distancing, the rule of six and the avoidance of mixing households, theatres up and down the country are offering a sudden burst of one-person shows. Lister is one of the solo performers hoping to bring a bit of Christmas cheer to the end of this miserable year.
“We’ve got a poet raven, a Scottish robber, a Brummie reindeer – not the famous one,” lists Lister, who will play almost a dozen characters in Scarborough’s The Snow Queen. Staged at the Stephen Joseph Theatre (SJT), the show was originally intended for a cast of five, but to avoid a gamble, they whittled it down to one actor. “We workshopped it over Zoom, got characters up on their feet and picked the best of the bunch.” The protagonists, Kai and Gerder, begin their life as baubles on a Christmas tree.