It’s common for the Mother Ginger role in The Nutcracker ballet to be played by a man in drag in the tradition of a panto Dame. Depending on the performance, Mother Ginger encourages some fun cheering and hooting.
Soap producers make the effort to schedule recording around actors (stars?) who want the lucrative time off for panto. It’s a win win win situation: The soap gets some publicity (as seen in…). The actor gets a healthy boost to their pension fund, and the theatre makes enough profit to subsidise some more serious productions later in the year. That’s a fourts win - the funding helps budding actors get a foot on the stage.
Indeed, Matron!
Careful - do we want to encourage a revival of the Carry On tradition as well as panto?
