The show must go on and it does, every Christmas

Jo Kerrigan talks to Bryan Flynn about the demands of staging pantomime

THE festively-lit streets of Cork are bustling with Christmas shoppers, despite the grey drizzly weather. In the auditorium of the Opera House, it’s warm and dark, with the stage illuminated by lights. Halfway up the theatre, director Bryan Flynn stands at a control desk, headphones clamped to his ears, scribbling down notes while the choreographer puts his dancers through the same sequence, over and over. It’s not just about getting the steps right; they have to move in a certain way, and end up in exactly the right formation, so that the next piece of the action can come smoothly in.

“It’s a huge undertaking, a pantomime,” says Flynn. Unlike most theatrical productions, it requires a large backstage crew (20 at the last count), complicated lighting, and tons of props and costume changes (there are 47 wigs to be re-groomed for every performance). The cast is big too. As well as the principals and the chorus and dancers, there are six dance schools in the kids’ teams, which take turns in the heavy performance schedule. Twice-daily performances exhaust the adult members of the cast, but you won’t find them complaining that everyday life is put on hold from November to January.

The planning starts earlier for Flynn. “We start working on it in March. Since I started doing the Cork Opera House pantomime ten years ago, we’ve built up a really good team and I rely on them utterly. Maria Young, my production manager, achieves wonders, but everybody works their socks off, whether it’s the props team, the costume department, the set builders or the lighting team. I know that there isn’t any risk of discovering at the 11th hour that Cinderella’s coach won’t fit on stage, or that we don’t have a vital prop,” he says.

Flynn worried about having to get out of the theatre for the weekend, while several concerts were staged. “Having to work somewhere else is a serious concern when you really need to work with the stage as accurately as you do in pantomime. Every entrance, every exit, has to be exact, not an inch further upstage or downstage, and timed precisely, or the whole thing slows, falls out of sync,” he says.

Speed of action is essential in pantomime, keeping the predominantly young audience attentive and amused. “It’s got to be high-octane, full-speed, no waiting around. That’s what kids want, and you have to give it to them,” he says. One year, he left out the traditional ‘behind you’ sequence only to find that he had to reinstate it promptly after audience disappointment. “You have to include all the well-loved customs, not just ‘behind you’ but ‘oh no it isn’t’, and the chase,” he says. Now Flynn’s own small children are his reality check — if they like it, then it’s going to go fine with the audiences, but if they get bored, then he has to look at what needs to be done.

So what keeps this energetic young Waterford-born director/writer/composer coming back for more of such exhausting, demanding work? He’s no stranger to demanding productions, having 80 major shows under his belt, including Chess, Oklahoma, Mack & Mabel, Sweeney Todd, Chicago, Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof (for which he received best professional director award at the International Festival of Light Opera), Music Man, Oliver, Hot Mikado, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Fame, Me and My Girl, Anything Goes, Sweet Charity, Sound of Music, Jesus Christ Superstar, among others, as well as the children’s opera Lily’s Labyrinth for Garter Lane Theatre, and his acclaimed musical on the life of Michael Collins.

Cork opera buffs will remember his sensational Don Giovanni, which set Mozart’s opera in 1940s Hollywood, with glamorous screen stars, eager fans, mobsters and hit men, against a backdrop of speakeasies and nightclubs. But traditional pantomime? “I love pantomime. It’s such a challenge, pulling a gigantic presentation together, making it all happen, from the songs to the dances, the comedy to the romance, the set changes to the costume changes, bringing in new ideas while still keeping the old tradition alive,” he says. In fact, he has only just rushed back from Waterford Theatre Royal, where his Snow White opened last week.

So what does Flynn do with his spare time, one wonders. But the seat opposite is empty. He’s gone. Back to the job. Down in the darkened auditorium, director Flynn is already speaking softly but urgently into his headset. “From stage left, she has to come on from stage left.”

* Cinderella, Cork Opera House, from December 15. Morning, afternoon and evening performances. Booking on 021-4270022 or www.corkoperahouse.ie.