There are two reactions Alexander Grasic gets when he tells friends and colleagues in Hong Kong he’s the lead in a panto.
If they’re British: instant enthusiasm and questions about tickets. If they’re from almost anywhere else: utter bewilderment.
Mr. Grasic understands both. Originally from Montreal, the 28-year-old communications executive moved to Hong Kong as a child and soon got involved in amateur theatre. It was through this he and his initially nonplussed Canadian parents discovered the joys of panto – a British Christmas tradition best described as a mix between a jukebox musical and a slightly blue comedy show, with cross-dressing and Jingle Bells.
Canadian Alexander Grasic is playing Peter Pan in this year's production.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
“There’s such a big British expat community here, and when we moved we got integrated into that and it was a Christmas tradition for them,” Mr. Grasic said last month. “We always said it was like a DreamWorks movie, where the kids would go and laugh at the slapstick and get really into the audience participation and everything. And then my parents would be laughing at the sex jokes.”
He was reminiscing in a crowded rehearsal space on the third floor of an industrial building in San Po Kong, a neighbourhood in Kowloon. This has been home to the Hong Kong Players since 2008, as evidenced by the buildup of old costumes, sets, posters and other detritus from myriad shows and performances. Space was extra tight, as the theatre troupe’s live band was there to practise with the cast, bumping shoulders with a makeup artist conducting a tutorial for the child actors and a set decorator carefully painting a sign.
Casting for this year’s show, Peter Pan, Return to Neverland, began in June, with rehearsals getting under way in August and ramping up to three times a week from October. More than 90 children auditioned for the 18 younger roles, while dozens of adults – many of them veterans from previous shows – wanted to perform.
The actors playing Tinkerbell and Wendy practice a difficult scene performed on rollerskates.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
Playing Captain Hook is another Canadian – schoolteacher Sean Broadhurst, returning for a third stint on the Hong Kong panto stage. Like Mr. Grasic, the Calgary native had no familiarity with panto growing up, at least, not the proper kind.
“I was in something they called a panto, but it was just a normal production of Cinderella with the audience sitting quietly,” he said. “Here it’s very interactive. The audience yells at the actors and the actors react back, there’s lots of gender-swapped roles, it’s very chaotic, very playful.”
(Toronto has a panto tradition, with Ross Petty putting on a show almost every year since 1996, including this year’s The Wizard of Oz.)
The perfect panto joke is one that is incredibly obscene but goes completely over the heads of anyone under 15. (Mr. Grasic remembers watching panto as a kid and not understanding why people were laughing.) Most of these are delivered by the dame, a traditional role always played in drag, usually by a man with a beard or stubble and ridiculous fake breasts, dressed in a series of increasingly elaborate gowns.
While it’s possible to trace panto’s roots to ancient Greece, then through Italian masked comedies of the 1700s, the modern variety is deeply, sometimes impenetrably, British, both in its humour (cross-dressing has always been a big part of comedy in the United Kingdom) and appeal. It never took off widely across the empire, unlike other British peculiarities such as cricket or wigs in court.
Still, panto-style amateur dramatics in Hong Kong date back to the founding of the colony in the 19th century. The tradition was carried on by several troupes that, through a Ship of Theseus-style series of mergers and renamings, can be seen as antecedents of today’s Hong Kong Players.
The Players have been putting on pantos and other shows since 1991, six years before Hong Kong was handed over to Chinese rule, without stopping even for the COVID-19 pandemic, when they did a show over video conference. “It wasn’t our best performance, I’m not going to lie,” said Laura Dodwell-Groves, a member of the Hong Kong Players organizing committee, between making endless prerehearsal cups of tea for cast and crew.
Scotty Clare, an Australian panto veteran, practices for a scene. Panto involves lots of sing-a-long musical numbers with exuberant, gesture-rich dancing.
Even in the best of circumstances the panto balancing act can be difficult to pull off. Too dirty, and a show that is primarily aimed at children stops being appropriate for them; too benign, and the parents get bored and may not come next year. And unlike the many small-town productions taking place across Britain around Christmas time, the Players’ Peter Pan faces a competitive Hong Kong market: The first performances this year were up against Clockenflap, a music festival. And for those seeking higher-brow fare, the city’s internationally renowned ballet company has an annual production of The Nutcracker.
It doesn’t help that to an outsider the appeal of panto is hard to get across. “I don’t ever really know how to explain it,” Mr. Broadhurst said. “It’s for kids, but it’s fun and you’ll like it.”
Friends who do attend always enjoy the show, he said, as does his father, who has flown to Hong Kong to see all of Mr. Broadhurst’s performances – and even learned to get over innate politeness to engage properly.
“For us in Canada, we’re maybe not as used to shouting at the actors on stage,” Mr. Broadhurst said. “But on the second show he came to watch I could definitely hear him.”
While the cast rehearses, other members of the company prepare props and costumes for the performance.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
For many families in Hong Kong, panto has become as much of a Christmas tradition as it is in Britain itself. Attendees at one of the opening shows in late November – including many non-Brits – spoke about how they had become hooked (excuse the Peter Pan joke).
As for the show itself: To loud cheers from the children in attendance, Mr. Grasic and his fellows defeated Mr. Broadhurst’s pirates, and everything culminated in Peter and Wendy getting married, with Dame Fishy Nets describing the latter as a “bit of a Pan-sexual,” before noting wryly, “good luck explaining that one to the kids, mums and dads.”