There Is Nothing Like A (Pantomime) Dame

Paul Hawkyard and Robin Simpson reflect that over the past 12 months that they’ve probably seen more of each other than their other halves.

The reason is easily explained - they’ve worked on three stage projects together with rehearsals by day and performing at night. First came the 2021-22 York Theatre Royal pantomime Cinderella, then two plays in the summer rep season at Harrogate Theatre. Now the two actors, who once shared a dressing room during Shakespeare’s Rose theatre season in York, are together again in the 2022-23 pantomime All New Adventures of Peter Pan.

Last year their Ugly Sisters Manky and Mardy saw them nominated in the British Pantomime Awards. This year they are in cahoots again with Paul as the villainous Captain Hook while Robin putting on a frock again as one of Hook’s henchpersons Mrs Smee.

There’s little doubt that this initially accidental coupling as a theatrical double act works a treat. “I feel safe when I’m on stage with Robin. I know that whatever happens, even if my brain falls apart, he’ll be there to catch me,” explains Paul.

“Or take the mickey,” adds Robin.

Back to Paul: “I do think he’s really funny and love working with him. We’re so different – he massages and strokes scripts but I have a tendency to bully things out of scripts. That difference is nice”.

Both are Yorkshire based. Leeds-born Paul is now living in Selby, while Robin has lived in Yorkshire half his life, currently in Slaithwaite near Huddersfield. The pair were together again – in Yorkshire - for the 2022 Harrogate Theatre rep season last September/October which proudly boasted “three weeks, three plays, one cast”. Both appeared in the opening production, Abigail’s Party, and the final one, John Godber’s Men of the World. Robin also had a leading role in the middle production, Gaslight.

“Both plays at Harrogate were comedies but we did have some heavy scenes including a big face-off where it threatens to get physical,” says Leeds-born Paul, who now lives in Selby. “He’s not just a comedy actor but a great straight actor as well. It’s good to work with the same people in different things. That’s one of the pleasures of the job really. If you work with the same people again and again, you feel safer.”

Robin agrees that as an actor it’s great working with people you’ve worked with before and know will get on with the job, do it well and not be stupid.

He says: “The cast I’ve just worked with in David Reed’s new comedy Guy Fawkes (at York Theatre Royal) we’re just lovely. Acting is a collaborative process, then at the end of the day you wave goodbye. Guy Fawkes was one of those jobs where you think ‘you’re brilliant and I’d work with you all again’ – and that’s very rare. Sometimes you think, ‘working with that person is something special’. It’s like that with Paul.”

Both have been in productions of Peter Pan before. Paul appeared in a musical version at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002 which featured Susannah York, Richard Wilson and perhaps most surprisingly costume and set designs by Laurence Llewelyn Bowen of Changing Rooms fame. Robin was in the cast of what he calls “an alternative Peter Pan”, a modernised version called Neverland at Lakeside Theatre in Nottingham.

One time the pair did see their other halves was when they attended the British Pantomime Awards ceremony in London after Paul and Robin were nominated in the best Ugly Sisters category.

“We had a good night out at the awards with our other halves. The Uglies was the first award. We’d just sat down, they announced the winners – not us – and then we had to sit there for the entire awards. It would have been rude to leave as York Theatre Royal’s Cinderella was nominated as best pantomime,” says Paul.

“Although we didn’t win we were pleased to be nominated and recognised in that way,” adds Robin, who will return as Dame in York Theatre Royal’s 2023-24 pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk.