Smut for the smart: An interview with panto dame Paul L Martin

As the pantomime season gets underway, The Upcoming caught up with the impresario of latest offering Booty and Biatch, Paul L Martin, to talk tradition, innuendo and twisting fairytales into farce.

You’re preparing for your 14th festive production; your shows have become a bone fide tradition! What was the initial genesis behind the first production?

PLM: Why, thank you. I know – we’re as loved and hated as Brussels sprouts and having to see the mother-in-law! When we started back on the Battersea barge 14 years ago, director Simon James Green and I were producing a weekly cabaret called Trinity’s and I was still a drag queen called Trinity Million. The single performance of Cinderella that Simon wrote was a festive offering from Trin and her regular cast members, in the vague shape of a scripted panto! Very vague as it turned out…

How have the shows evolved since?

PLM: We’ve actually toned it done a hell of a lot, or people have just got used to the shock factor – not sure which. Family Guy didn’t exist back then and I remember feeling at some point after five years of that being on air that our audiences were more prepared for the filth and lambasting somehow! Nowadays, there is more satire and less cock jokes. We’re the thinking man’s adult panto. The Joan Bakewell of adult panto, if you will. Smut for the smart.

This year it’s Booty and the Biatch. What are the some of the ways in which audiences can expect your telling of the tale to differ from the Disney version?

PLM: Despite having poured over countless versions and researched the original French story, it is the Disney model that we are lampooning, most definitely. Among other things, our Booty has a large derriere and is shoplifting items to sell on eBay in order to fund her road to Oxbridge University to read books. Lumière is lactose intolerant and borderline hypoglycaemic, and the enchanted rose is played by a five-foot-tall, tattooed Korean.

As well as writing and producing, you also take the all-important role of the dame. Tell us a bit about your character.

PLM: It’s an honour to be channelling my Angela Lansbury while dressed as a teapot-slash-Dame. I’m having a bash at Angela’s voice from the film too, which is tremendous fun and, like all good panto dames, she’s an eye for the fellas. A little bit of a sexual predator, you might say. And just wait ‘til you see my son, Chip!

Do you find the jobs of director and dame fit together well? Do the company react to you differently once you’re fully “damed up”?

PLM: This year has been an exercise in letting go for me and, as such, I have enlisted my fabulous assistant director from the past three years, Vanessa Pope, to take over the directorial duties fully. It’s hard to toe the line and I still have to pop in with my writer hat or producer hat on sometimes, but luckily the cast and crew are used to me being a megalomaniac so they go with the flow. Many people are very scared of me when I am in drag. Can’t think why.

Are there some fairy tales/stories that translate better to adult panto than others?

PLM: Because we are such visual creatures, especially these days, the ones that have been turned into Disney films have obvious immediate reference points that most of us will get.  Mother Goose, on the other hand, is a pretty obscure story that many of us haven’t seen or can’t remember. It’s hard to lampoon a reference that is not well-known.

Your productions feature a lot of topical humour and satire. How do you go about picking your targets, and who’s “in for it” this year?

PLM: Disney’s film has a baddie called Gaston in it, who is wooing Belle. In our version he has become Nigel Garage, UKIP party candidate for Ashby De La Zouch. He wears leather lederhosen and strangles puppies. There are also some euros involved…

Is there much rivalry in the adult panto world?

PLM: I don’t know. There’s certainly more competition than ever before – I think London has five or six now. Many of them professed to be the longest-running, but I think they’ll find that I have that dubious trophy and I ain’t giving it up. I’ve written to them all this year offering free tickets and the hand of friendship, but only two have been polite enough to reply so far. The people from the RVT panto are lovely and very supportive.

You must have to think up a lot of innuendo gags. Are you worried you’ll one day run out?

PLM: The beauty of it is that you don’t really need new ones. People want the familiar in panto. It’s all about tradition. We are the original up-cycle/make-do-and-mend industry! It’s not a question of running out, so much of continuing to find ways of setting the gag up in ever more original or surprising ways.  

Have there been any memorable audience reactions to some of the more shocking content of the shows over the years?

PLM: People have walked out in disgust, which we always think of as an accomplishment. When I wrote to all last year’s audiences to let them know our new home I had a reply saying “After having sat through the vile and debased offering you gave last year, I would prefer to never hear from you again, thank you”. But that’s my parents for you.

Stuart Boyland

Booty and the Biatch is on at Lost Theatre 14^th-17^th December 2014, for further information or to book visit here.