Behind You, Madonna: My Disastrous Audition to Become Pantomime's First Renaissance Dame
Photo: Paul Lormier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There comes a moment in every Old Master's life when the gallery walls start to feel a bit tight. For me, it arrived last Tuesday, somewhere between the fourth hour of being admired by a school group from Rotherham and the realisation that my commission fee hadn't moved since 1503. So when I saw an open casting call for this year's panto at the Civic — Jack and the Beanstalk, with matinees — I did what any self-respecting Renaissance icon would do. I dusted off the velvet, practised my smize in a puddle, and got myself to Yorkshire.
What follows is an honest account of what happened. Reader, it did not go enigmatically.
The Audition Room Smelled of Lynx and Ambition
The call said 'all welcome, no experience necessary, dancers especially'. I am none of these things. I am a half-length portrait on a poplar panel with a resting expression described by scholars as 'unsettlingly knowing'. My warm-up routine consists of not blinking for extended periods.
The room contained forty-three hopefuls, a pianist called Terry, and a director named Sandra who had clearly seen some things. Sandra had a clipboard and the eyes of a woman who has directed fourteen consecutive Christmas seasons and will not be broken by number fifteen.
'Name and special skill?' she asked.
'Lisa. Smirking. Five hundred years of it, uninterrupted.'
She wrote something down. I'm fairly sure it wasn't a compliment.
Sandra's Notes Were, Frankly, Iconic
To her credit, Sandra gave notes with the efficiency of a woman who wanted to be home by the second half of Strictly. They came rapid-fire:
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'Less enigmatic, more dame.' Apparently the smoulder reads as 'menace' in a family setting. I was asked to do my smirk 'bigger, wider, with the eyebrows involved'. I have never used my eyebrows. They are structural.
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'Can you take direction while inside the cow?' I was handed half a pantomime horse and asked to be the rear. I wish to state for the record that I was the front, and that my rear-end partner, a lovely lad called Dean who does weddings, carried the whole routine.
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'Stop looking at the audience like you know how it ends.' I do know how it ends. It ends with 'he's behind you'. That's the entire premise. I said this. Sandra did not laugh.
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'The velvet is a fire hazard and also a mood.' One point retracted.
The Song Sheet Broke Me
The final stage was a group singalong of 'If I Were Not Upon the Stage', which requires each auditionee to invent a profession and act it out. I said 'sitter'. I stood perfectly still for thirty seconds while forty people sang about me. It was, in many ways, the most accurate piece of method acting ever delivered in a Barnsley rehearsal room, and I received a standing ovation from nobody.
Terry the pianist, however, gave me a nod. Terry understood. Terry has seen faces that don't move before.
The Verdict: Does Renaissance Royalty Belong in Panto?
Sandra rang me that evening. She said I had 'real presence' but that I'd be 'better suited to the programme notes, or possibly a raffle prize'. She offered me the role of Enchantments Understudy, which I suspect involves standing at the back being mysterious, which — coincidentally — is my entire skill set.
Do I recommend it? Absolutely. Panto is the last honest institution in British theatre: no fourth wall, no subtlety, and a firm national agreement that a man in a dress shouting 'oh no she isn't' is culture. It just turns out that a five-hundred-year-old half-smile, calibrated for quiet contemplation in Florence, cannot survive contact with a foam horse and a bucket of confetti.
The smirk, for the record, survived intact. Dean has my number. Sandra has my dignity. And if you're in Barnsley this December, keep an eye on the raffle prize. She's worth the walk.
