Going down the "rabbit hole" of panto on the Hastings stage

He's loving the thought of Christmas in Hastings in Jack and the Beanstalk at the White Rock, running from December 11-January 4.

“When I was younger, culturally it was not really part of my upbringing, my Caribbean background. We didn't go to panto in the way that other people did. I was raised by my grandparents who came over on the Windrush and a lot of my friends were telling me about panto. They would tell me that they had seen Jack and the Beanstalk and that they had seen Snow White and I'd say ‘What? Live?’ The closest I got to all those characters was cartoons. I wanted to see it, but it never happened.”

But Richard has now done a string of pantos: “I got my first panto in 2007-08 and I did a few until I got EastEnders in 2014.”

And yes, panto still seems strange: “It's another world literally that you only get in panto, and you see that with some of the old-school performers, particularly the dames that I remember. You can tell that they take it very seriously and that it is their show. I did a panto with a guy years ago who was playing dame and I can remember when the director was talking to the cast he would interrupt and tell another actor ‘No, I think this is the way that you should be saying the line.’ He would say ‘No, I'm sure you will find that it has to be said this way.’ But actually me and him got on very well. We had to work very closely together and it required the timing to be good. We just had a great time, and I think he just respected me because I was extremely professional.”

As for the great attraction of panto: “It is escapism! It is not real. You are going down the rabbit hole. The cognitive part of me is saying ‘Richard, it is not real!’ but actually as much you have got the theme, whether it is Jack and the Beanstalk or whatever, the production will pull on things that are happening in the real world just for the satire. You have to make sure that there's something for the kids but that there is also something for the adults and it's amazing how risqué some pantos are. There have been pantos where you hear lines that are said in a way that you think ‘Is that allowed?’ The kids miss it completely but the adults are loving it.

“I did a panto in Bournemouth a few years back and I played the bad character, and the way he was written on paper was not the way that I came up with in the end. The way I played him was the closest you could imagine to a pimp! That wasn’t something that I naturally moved towards. It's just something that happened. I wore an outfit and the outfit really brought it out in me. I work out and it showed my physique and when I came on, the mums went ‘Ooooh!’ The children were booing but I said to one child at one point ‘You are booing me but your mum is loving this!’”

Tickets from the venue.