Interview: Writers and performers Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner on POTTED PANTO
Photo credit: Josh McLure
London’s longest running panto, Potted Panto, launched at the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in 2010 and is written by Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner who are also responsible for the worldwide hit Potted Potter. We spoke to Daniel and Jefferson ahead of their run at Wilton’s Music Hall this festive season.
When did you first meet each other and decide to start working together?
JT: I was trying my hand at a bit of storytelling in Covent Garden in 2005 and it wasn’t going brilliantly. I saw Dan stood at the back of my crowd (do 6 people constitute a crowd..?) and he was laughing politely. When I was done, he asked if he could buy me a beer and as I’d collected less than the price of a pint, I gladly accepted. Turns out he was looking for someone to play the boy wizard in a silly piece for the launch of the sixth Harry Potter book and obviously saw something in me that the tourists of Covent Garden hadn’t…
DC: Jeff was workin' as a waitress in a cocktail bar
When I met him, I picked him out, I shook him up and turned him around
Turned him into someone new. That’s the truth, I bet he told you some nonsense about me seeing him in Covent Garden when I was looking for someone to play Harry Potter for what later came to be Potted Potter….little fibber!
Where did the idea for Potted Panto come from?
JT: After the success of Potted Potter, we decided we wanted to write something else together. We had appeared in Panto as the Ugly Sisters in Potter’s very early days and had the time of our lives. We both love panto and are also aware of how very silly the whole thing is, so it felt ripe for parody. AND we get to be Princesses and fairies and Wizards and heroes. As a job.
DC: Strangely enough, I’d done a storytelling job out in Lapland over Christmas back in 2000, one of the most fun if not surreal jobs I’d ever done! I shared a log cabin with Father Christmas! (Turns out his name’s actually Dave and he lived in Blackpool with his mum!) I did a one man pantomime of Sleeping Beauty. It was very rough round the edges, but I loved the idea.
Then track on a few years and Jeff and I were being the Ugly sisters in Cinderella, we started chatting about this and our love for Panto and it just seemed that Pantomime lent itself so nicely to the Potted style. Think some of the stuff from that 2000 sketch is still in the show today! We were recycling before it was cool!
This show has returned for many years now. Why do you think audiences are loving it so much?
JT: Dan and I are really very good friends and that comes across onstage. Also, we have a genuine love for pantomime and that also comes across. Throw in the fact that we include everything from every panto ever in one show and we are miles cheaper than the Palladium, and what’s not to like…?
DC: Pantomime is such a wonderful British tradition, and there really is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. I think as we race through seven different pantos, people love the chance to be able to come and relive the Christmas nostalgia while letting their children have the first experience of this wonderful form of theatre, and all the while enjoying us lovingly poking fun at some of the strange yet beautiful panto traditions that have been placed into our psyche since birth! It genuinely is fun for the whole family and isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
You've performed it in quite a few venues now. How does the venue change the show?
JT: We are so excited to be bringing the show to Wilton’s this year. The show has mostly been on in the West End, which we obviously have absolutely loved, but we are always sharing our theatre with another show. This year, we have a building as beautiful as this music hall all to ourselves. The stage has a 2 or 3 foot step in the middle of it – because of this, we have built in extra rehearsals, so we can utilise this to adapt the show and make it better. Also, having seen a few shows at Wilton’s, it has a far more intimate feel than The Vaudeville or The Apollo, despite still being a big room – I think it’s going to be huge fun to play!
DC: While it’s been such a privilege to be able to tread some of the most hallowed boards in the West End over the years, we’re so excited to becoming to Wilton’s this year. It’s such a beautiful and magical venue, and the perfect setting for this fun festive show! I believe as one of the oldest working music halls, it was one of the most popular things in London in the late 1800’s… Then again so was the pox. Yup, I stand by it, we are like the Christmas pox!
How do you keep the show feeling fresh even after having performed it so many times?
JT: Dan is mischievous on stage. That’s how. It’s like working with a Labrador puppy – he gets a glint in his eye and I know I need to be on my toes. We try stuff out live too. Sometimes it has been discussed and sometimes it hasn’t, but we know that we each know the show so well, that we can get back on track swiftly. Most of the time. Also, we work really hard on making each show seem like the first time it has happened – that’s where most of the energy goes and why you might see us slumped in the alleyway afterwards!
DC: We try and update and change the show every year which helps a lot to keep it fresh. Like any good Pantomime half, the fun is making the current pop culture jokes and maybe having a pop or two at those in power. Take Dick Whittington for example, the boy destined to be Lord Mayor of London. For a long time, we had him resembling a certain blonde shaggy haired bumbling chap whose name might rhyme with Morris Donson. But as he has left the political world so too as he left the show! But what we have now has to be seen to be believed! Four words… Hot pants, Jeff’s legs. Worth the ticket price alone!
You've done Potted Panto and Potted Potter now - are there any other Potted shows on the cards?
JT: We also had Potted Pirates and Potted Sherlock in amongst all that. Pirates was our difficult second album and we shelved that after a couple of years. Sherlock was great fun and really well received, but when the hype for the Benedict Cumberbatch version died off, our sales didn’t survive. I’d love to resurrect that one though – I enjoyed being Dr Watson; there was a lot more sitting involved than there is in Potted Panto! We’ve discussed many other ideas over the years, but we are yet to find one that really excites us both. Unless you can get us the rights to Star Wars? We’d do that. Do you know George Lucas…?
DC: As Jeff said, we had the critically ignored Potted Pirates, everything you ever wanted to know about Pirates. Turns out people didn’t want to know that much, good life lesson! And Potted Sherlock, all 62 Sherlock Holmes stories in 70 minutes! That was so much fun to do, and I hope that it might one day resurface in some form. I still think there’s a certain Doctor and his blue box who is perfect for the Potted treatment, but we shall see. As we get older though, the title ‘Potted comfy bed with a nice fluffy pillow’ becomes more and more appealing!
Why should audiences add Potted Panto to their Christmas plans for this year?
JT: Because it is an absolute must to see at least one panto at Christmas, and we’ve got seven. Therefore, your Christmas will be seven times as merry. Also, we have made the show as entertaining for adults as it is for kids, as there’s nothing worse than clock-watching during a children’s show after a bit too much Christmas spirit the night before…
DC: If you see just one Panto this Christmas, make sure it’s the Palladium’s Peter Pan, I hear its magical! But as it’s the time of year to make merry and enjoy yourself, I’d highly recommend you come and see ours too! Plus it’s a darn sight cheaper and we promise 7 Pantomimes in 80 minutes with more festive frivolity than you could stuff a turkey with… Book now and Jeff will give you all a free holly spruced figgy pudding!*
*They’ll be no free figgy pudding, spruced or otherwise.
Potted Panto plays at Wilton’s Music Hall from 29 November-30 December, with further information here.