Panto in Focus: The McKnight Before Christmas

Like a shark, panto seems never to have evolved beyond its basic format: cheap jokes, brash song and dance, celebrity turns, a spot of transvestitism and asides for the adults. That it happens to be the most popular performance genre in the UK – aside from musicals, which have a similar lack of cool – is irrelevant. Pantomime is brash and crass, a blot on the high art reputation of Scotland's renaissance.

There is at least one man who has been lending pantomime and Christmas shows credibility over the past seven years. From Macrobert, Johnny McKnight has been writing scripts with a knowing wit and a boundless love for its playful tradition and energy. Critically acclaimed for his Random Accomplice company – co-founded with Julie Brown, they have covered everything from zombie invasions of the West Coast through to urban education – McKnight built his reputation on Stirling's Christmas shows. This year, they are reviving his Cinderella, while he heads into Glasgow to give the Tron Agneza Scrooge (writing, directing and doing a drag turn as the heroine). And in Edinburgh, the Lyceum's artistic director Mark Thomson takes the helm for another McKnight Cinderella.

Thomson is clear on why he wanted a McKnight script. "Johnny has a great heart and understands children and what they like probably more than a lot of us with kids do!" he says. "He also has a fantastic wit that again talks to children and adults." Although the Lyceum show is not a pantomime – like The Citizens in Glasgow, Dundee Rep and the Traverse around the corner, the Lyceum tries to connect their Christmas treat with the work they produce during the year – it has the same humour and musical numbers that encourage the festive mood.

McKnight was quick to point out that he wanted the Lyceum show to be very different from the Macrobert show: and his Tron production is different again. Acknowledging his love for the classic Tron pantomimes of Forbes Masson  – their mash-up of very Glaswegian humour, wry jibes at other theatres and twisted fairy tales made them an alternative to the traditional format – he is excited by his all female cast and the support of artistic director Andy Arnold. 

Ironically, McKnight has few memories of pantomime from his childhood: it wasn't a family tradition and his first time was inauspicious. "I remember going with the school and feeling terrified!" he remembers. In fact, it wasn't until he went for a directing job at The Arches that he was introduced to the pantomime. "I was asked 'Would you like to be an ugly sister in a wee panto in Loch Lomond?' I just really enjoyed it." His training – in the more experimental theatre world – turned out to be perfect.

"I did contemporary performance practice at college," he says. "And I found pantomime dead easy because we used all the same rules! Breaking the fourth wall, needing to be aware of the audience, you are allowed to reply to what is happening live. And you kind of bring yourself to the part. It felt like a natural thing."

For the best part of seven years, it is as if McKnight has had too parallel careers: writing, directing and performing in Random Accomplice's ecelctic shows and gradually working his way up the Christmas show ladder. His big break came quickly: "For two years at Macrobert I played parts in the Chritsmas show: I played the dame in Aladdin. I was a lot younger then, and I kind of got drunk at the aftershow party and said 'I think I should write your panto next year. The next morning, I got a phone call..."

McKnight's demenour may explain his aptitude for pantomime performance. His energy, even when being interviewed over lunch in the Tron bar, is contagious and his very West Coast accent and sense of humour is reflected in his scripts. Although he takes his work seriously, his enthusiasm and mischievious wit are obvious. 

In taking on the Tron pantomime, McKnight is integrating his careers - since Arnold moved there from The Arches, Random Accomplice have followed him, staging The Promise, Small Town and the recent Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam on its main stage. But these are big shoes to fill: Forbes Masson, one-time collaborator with national treasure Alan Cumming, used a cunning combination of knowing theatricality and vaudeville antics to make the Tron's pantomime a hit for both adults and children. 

McKnight's work at Macrobert did pay tribute to Masson's shows: he set them in "the pantosphere" – Masson's alternative reality. And although the two Kings' Theatres host the classic pantomimes – with competition from the Pavilion for something earthier and the SECC for something starring a man from Doctor Who – the Tron has always made the connection between the festive special and Scotland's love of variety.

Over in the Lyceum, Mark Thomson encouraged McKnight to follow his inspiration for a Cinderella that is very different from the version at Macrobert. "I really wanted a young, contemporary voice to tell that great story, someone who is of now and young enough to be in touch with the people he is talking about and to," says Thomson. McKnight is grateful for Thomson's support. "Mark was great," he says: after a first draft, he encouraged McKnight not to simply write a show for the Lyceum. "He said – 'I want you writing a show.'  In the first draft I bottled it! But now it's still got that high camp aspect and the second act is wild. I'll be interested to see how it goes."

For both Aganeza and Cinderella, McKnight's humour is matched by serious themes and intentions. His Cinderella, he admits, "is quite moralistic. Buttons is a mute because he has seen all the horror of the step-sisters." And he decided to undermine the fairy-story ending: "The bad people always get redemption. But, actually, they deserve to be punished!"

Thomson is delighted with the result. "Of course he's come up with such a clever and refreshing version that will have anyone wanting a traditional Christmas story absolutely fine: but at the same time he is inventive and playful so you see it like you've never seen it before.  Now that's clever."

For the Tron, he is not only delighted by the story but is addressing something that more serious productions have also tackled. "A female Scrooge is an idea I have been playing with for three years," he says. "And it is still a panto:  I have just been really strict with myself about the story of Scrooge. It's still Marley... Tiny Tim. I am telling what I think is the best Christmas story, but with a panto twist!"

Part of the pleasure, McKnight laughs, has been the research: Bill Murray's Scrooged is his favourite Christmas film, although he also got to rewatch The Muppets' version. But, like the grand version of The Guid Sisters earlier this year, McKnight is celebrating the female talent of Scotland.

"I do have a bug bear that panto is a bit of a boy's club: I loved the National Theatre of Scotland's Christmas Carol last year but I noticed for the first time how heavy it is on the male characters." Aganeza has an all female cast: McKnight even wrote the script with specific actors in mind. "I literally saw the people I wanted in the show and then wrote it for them," he laughs.

McKnight may have chosen Scrooge for the wonderful redemption of the main character, but it is possible that his approach may be the redemption of pantomime for the cynics. He describes it with a glee that manages to recast the pantomime as an example of radical, devised theatre – except more accessible. 

"I am not precious about my work: if someone else can come up with something funny... that's why I like it! It's group collaboration," he says. And as for the performers: "You want it to be a laugh: you are needing to have fun, because it is a longer run, doing it twice a day. If you are just doing it for a wage, you'll kill it. Don't do it!"