ALAN McHugh is a man of many faces. A well-known TV actor from programmes as diverse as Taggart, Outlander and Limmy’s Show, his best-kent face – in the North East of Scotland, at any rate – is that of the hilariously glaikit dame in the annual pantomime at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen.
This year, his gloriously ludicrous dame (complete with a front tooth painted out) will be the very funny and stable centre of The Pantomime Adventures of Peter Pan. He’ll be joined by TV dance star Brendan Cole (as Captain Hook) and (McHugh’s comic sidekick of recent years) the excellent Paul J (aka PJ) Corrigan (who takes on the role of panto dafty Smee).
Covid pandemic notwithstanding, this is McHugh’s 19th year at the helm of Aberdeen’s panto. In fact, he realised recently, that midway through this year’s show, he will hit the commendable milestone of 1000 performances as the Granite City’s dame (which compares well with Sir Alex Ferguson’s 439 games in charge of Aberdeen FC).
“It’s a genuine honour and privilege”, says the Glaswegian actor, to have been the star of Aberdeen’s panto for so long. “I love this city, and I love the theatre. I’m very fortunate to have built up such a great bond with the audience.”
As well as being a great pantomime performer, McHugh is the UK’s leading writer of panto scripts. This year he has written more than 20 scripts (17 of them for the massive pantomime producer Crossroads Live). He compares the job of penning so many Christmas scripts to painting the Forth Rail Bridge: “you start in January, work through to the end of the year, then you start again in January”.
How, I wonder, does McHugh go about garnering the necessary local knowledge for shows in places as diverse as Southampton, Glasgow and Aberdeen itself?
“The internet is the best invention in the world for this,” he admits. “Back 15 or 20 years ago, I was having to rely on friends who lived in Belfast or Plymouth or speak to stage crew at the various theatres. Since Google has come along, it’s made my job so much easier.”
Back in the day, the writer explains, even the writing of the Granite City’s panto required hours of painstaking research.
“I used to sit with an AA road map beside me”, he remembers, “With all the names of the local villages and all that. On the other side of the desk, I’d have a Doric dictionary.”
As a Scot, he has little trouble coming up with local jokes for Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. However, other locales are a bit trickier.
“It’s so important to give audiences their own tailor-made panto, and not just something off-the-shelf”, McHugh insists. “I do spend a lot of time checking out local dialects and local traditions.”
That said, there are certain tricks of the trade when it comes to researching geographically specific gags. Local reference jokes in pantomimes are, the writer comments, “usually about your local football teams, the rivalry with your neighbouring city, your local rough areas, your local posh areas... Most local gags work in every city if they’re given the right tweak.”
Unlike panto in England (which often casts people who are merely “famous for being famous” in lead roles), Scottish pantomime is based upon its faithfulness to its roots in the music hall. Scottish audiences expect their panto artists to be professional stage performers.
I can’t help but wonder if the inclusion in this year’s Aberdeen show of Brendan Cole, the well-known dancer from Aotearoa (to give New Zealand its proper, Maori name), takes the His Majesty’s production towards the English tradition of headlining with people who are “famous off the telly”. A professional ballroom dancer, Cole is best known in the UK for his many appearances on the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing.
“I completely buy that”, says McHugh, on the subject of the English tradition. “I would not like to pay and go to see a panto with Frank Bruno being trailed on in a frock”, he says, referring to some of the most notorious English pantomimes of yesteryear, which starred the former heavyweight boxing champion. Nor, the actor-writer adds, would he want to see a pantomime featuring “someone from Love Island who has no discernible stage talents: they can’t sing, they can’t dance, they’re not a comic, they’re not a ventriloquist. That abhors me”.
However, he insists – although Cole is well known for his TV work – he is not a performer who is out of his depth on the panto stage. “We [in the His Majesty’s cast] are all blown away by Brendan’s all-round talent”, says McHugh.
“He sings, he dances, he’s funny. And the best thing about him is that he’s happy for us to rip the utter pish out of him.
“Every time he comes on stage, me and PJ think he’s Anton Du Beke, and, in the character of Captain Hook, he gets angrier and angrier about that. Also – in the same way that people think Canadians are American or Scots are English – we think he’s Australian throughout the show. He’s happy to have the pish ripped out of him, both as Brendan Cole and as Captain Hook.”
In fact, Cole has impressed his fellow cast members off-stage as well as on. “Here’s the measure of the guy”, McHugh says. “We know Brendan’s a big star beyond these borders, but he’s the one giving his number to everyone in the company, from the actors to the dancers, to set up a WhatsApp group for the nonsense, shenanigans and parties. He’s the social secretary.”
With such a convivial headliner joining him and an excellent cast – which includes rising Aberdonian star Danielle Jam – McHugh is looking forward to the 2022-23 pantomime run with confidence. Who can doubt that tickets for the show will, like Mr Cole himself, be dancing out the door?
The Pantomime Adventures of Peter Pan plays His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen until January 8: aberdeenperformingarts.com
