Christine Macrae: Panto 1952
Something different this month: memories of the theatre from my childhood - but don't worry, the next book guide will be published shortly.
Panto 1952
This reproduction of the 1952 Alhambra pantomime poster shows my dad, with Alec Finlay, Robert Wilson and Harry Gordon. For us, going to the panto followed an annual ritual which began with sending a greetings telegram for the first night, a nervous wait for the notices then seeing the show. The highlight was going backstage. Many writers note how our senses are bombarded in childhood. There can few heavier bombardments than what lies beyond the stage door in a theatre. We gaped at the beanstalk, scrutinised Cinderella's coach and stared at the mother goose suit made of real feathers waiting in the wings for its occupant beside a giant golden egg. When Aladdin was on at the Empire with Mark Wynter, a contemporary pop idol in the title role, I was around 12 at the time and found myself speechless with awe on being introduced.
I still have a Robert Wilson LP called the Tang o' the heather, with roamin in the gloamin, a Gordon for me etc thereon. I thought he sang like an angel but my mother was derisive. She claimed he sang through his nose and was unfit to hold a candle to Kenneth McKellar who really was a wonderful tenor. But it was Robert Wilson's nasal twang I preferred. Alec Finlay was a charming wee man, whose wife Rita's mink coat was a legend half a century ago. In the summer of 53 we joined the crowd gathered round a microscopic television in their flat to watch the coronation. Looking out the window down on Victoria Road was the attraction for me.
On being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up (it should have been if) I explained if I failed in my primary ambition of trapeze artist, I would be a principal boy like Fay Lenore. Not only did she live with a handsome husband on a Loch Lomond Island, she cavorted around in fishnets and thigh high boots cracking her whip, dancing and belting out romantic songs. At 7 I believed no better life could be imagined.
I guess my lifelong scepticism began backstage when Cinderella's coach close up was revealed as literally tacked together with chunks of glass for jewels. The intricacies of the Kirby's flying ballet harness were never revealed, not even to a child, so Babes in the Wood remains magic for me even now. I have no doubt birds would fly over and cover me with leaves should I ever fall asleep in a forest. It was reassuring believing panto stories and it took me a while to realise life is not fair bursting with magic interventions and happy endings.
The dressing room stood up to closer scrutiny. There is a fascination seeing glamour close to. My dad had lovely dresses, fancy wigs and glittering jewels and no other girl in primary 1 could make a similar boast. I considered his large emerald green size 10 high heels the ultimate in sophistication, surpassing even the principal boy suit and the Rita Finlay mink. My third vocational choice was dresser. They spent hours making tea surrounded by fabulous dresses and costume jewellery. I imagined Nora, our dad's dresser, tinkering around with the Leichner at her leisure, in front of a mirror festooned with greetings telegrams and framed with light bulbs. What kind of "house" it was mattered in our family, a full or empty house, a good or bad house, a quiet house or a noisy house.
It's difficult to recall the importance of the panto to Glasgow life then. My first experience of political satire, long before TW3, was Rikki Fulton and Stanley Baxter in starling suits, standing on a box purporting to be a ledge above the City Chambers, discussing the councillors as they came and went and the various dignitaries from as far afield as Edinburgh who passed below on municipal business. I vividly recall 2 comics dressed in winter coats, with fur hats and suitcases marked Bulganin and Kruschev. Why they were running and where from or to I had no idea. They brought the house down. Although one's grip on world affairs is acquired gradually and at laboriously slow speed it is amusing to recall where it began.
Our link with the wider world in 1952 was the radio and daily paper. It was before we got our radiogram and long before television was made welcome. Panto music mattered, the parodies of popular song, or original songs, like Johnny Grieve doing his Glasgow subway song on the drop down sheet. I still think of when I see the stations of "...Georges Cross and Govan cross where all the people meet, West Street, Shield Road, the train goes round and round, it's lovely going your holidays on the Glasgow underground.
Panto stories are the armature on which much literature is built. Babes in the wood is Hansel and Gretel, the archetypal fable of family life. It shows how parents have to be cruel to be kind. We have to abandon our children somehow, to let them deal with problems and find their own way back. In Cinderella, materialism is symbolic. It concerns not judging by appearances but finding goodness of character no matter how degrading circumstances might be. The ugly sisters should appear well groomed, their ugliness in internal. And as for Jack and the beanstalk, the apparently stupid behaviour of the son sets him up for tests of courage, which culminate in eventual justice. The giant gets his just desserts for his part in the death of Jack's father and robbing of the family fortune. Jack and his mum are early beneficiaries of the compensation culture.
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