Oh Yes They Did!

CAST’s Panto Dames — Frocks, Ad-Libs and a Little Bit of Chaos.

No history of CAST pantomime would be complete without celebrating one of its most important traditions — the panto dame.

Big frocks, bigger personalities, outrageous flirting, shameless ad-libbing and the occasional moment when even the rest of the cast had absolutely no idea what was coming next.

CAST’s dames have been at the heart of our pantomimes from the very beginning.

The Dames make the children feel like stars, never targets; yet at the same time target the sdults in the audience for laughs.

And, like so many CAST traditions, it all started with Cinderella.

2000 — Sam & Ella Start Something.

When CAST took over the Colnbrook pantomime tradition in December 2000, following the winding down of the Brookside Players, our first choice was the classic Cinderella.

And CAST’s first ever pantomime dames were Rob Ingham and Jonathan Heastie, playing the Ugly Sisters Sam and Ella.

They certainly did not ease themselves gently into the role.

Among their musical offerings were Sex Bomb and Do You Think I’m Sexy?, while their interaction with the audience quickly became one of the highlights of the show.

By the final Saturday, the ad-libbing had become increasingly adventurous.

The Slough Express noted that the pair teased and joked with the audience, making young and old laugh together — although some of the improvised material was, as the paper rather politely put it, “a bit risqué”.

That final night may well have planted the seed for another future CAST tradition: the Adults Only final panto performance.

So, within CAST’s very first pantomime, the dame tradition had already been firmly established.

Subtle it was not.

2001 — Jonathan Goes Solo

A year later came Puss in Boots, and this time Jonathan Heastie had the frocks all to himself as Widow Marzipan.

Having spent the previous Christmas as one half of the Ugly Sisters, Jonathan now became CAST’s first solo dame.

The local press clearly approved.

The Village Echo suggested Jonathan had:

“Missed his vocation in life”

such was his performance as Widow Marzipan.

And this was a dame living in a windmill with fully rotating blades — which meant every entrance and exit came with slightly more danger than most pantomime performers would normally expect.

Between the windmill, 22 songs, pyrotechnics and general CAST chaos, Widow Marzipan had plenty to contend with.

2002 — Enter Widow Twankey

For Aladdin in December 2002, it was Rob Ingham’s turn to take sole possession of the frocks.

Rob played Widow Twankey, bringing another wonderfully larger-than-life dame to the Colnbrook stage.

Among the memorable moments was Widow Twankey drowning her sorrows after being rejected by the Grand Vizier.

Naturally, she did this by downing a pint while singing All By Myself.

By this point, CAST had also decided to stop pretending that the final Saturday performance was going to behave like an ordinary family pantomime.

For the first time, the last show was officially advertised as:

ADULTS ONLY

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it sold out well before the other performances.

The CAST panto dame had officially become dangerous after dark.

2003 — Phil Excell Dons the Bra

Then came Jack and the Beanstalk in 2003, when Phil Excell stepped into the dame role for the first time as Widow Hyde.

Phil donned the wigs, frocks — and, of course, the bra — and threw himself into the role.

One of the highlights was his rendition of Kiss Kiss, which entered CAST memory as one of those performances that simply had to be seen.

Widow Hyde also had her own romantic interest in the shape of Inspector Allover, played by Keith Hughes.

But even the dame had serious competition for laughs that year from Vera and Ethel, played by Tim Cole and Jonathan Heastie, whose job was supposedly to entertain the audience during scene changes.

What actually happened involved Werther’s Originals, pizza deliveries, sausages and increasingly unpredictable ad-libs.

In other words, a fairly normal CAST pantomime by then.

More Than Just a Man in a Frock

A good pantomime dame does much more than wear an enormous costume and flirt with the front row.

The dame helps create the relationship between the audience and the show.

They can rescue a difficult moment, fill time when scenery refuses to cooperate, encourage children to shout louder, make adults laugh at jokes that sail safely over younger heads and — perhaps most importantly — make every performance feel slightly different from the night before.

CAST’s earliest pantomimes quickly discovered the joy of that unpredictability.

From Rob Ingham and Jonathan Heastie’s Sam and Ella, through Widow Marzipan, Widow Twankey and Phil Excell’s Widow Hyde, the dame became one of the characters audiences could look forward to before the curtain had even gone up.

And CAST being CAST, nobody could ever be entirely certain what the dame might say next.

Sometimes, neither could the rest of the cast.

The Tradition Begins

Looking back at those first four pantomimes, it is remarkable how many of the traditions we now associate with CAST panto were already taking shape.

There were outrageous costumes.

There were musical numbers that no respectable West End producer would ever have thought of giving to a dame.

There was audience participation.

There were improvised jokes.

There were final-night antics.

And eventually there was an Adults Only performance because everyone had finally accepted what was likely to happen anyway.

But most importantly, there were performers prepared to throw themselves completely into one of pantomime’s greatest traditions.

So here’s to the CAST dames — past, present and still waiting somewhere backstage for their next wig, frock and completely inappropriate chat-up line.

Oh yes they are!