Panto Come Home! takes a fun-loving musical trip down East Van memory lane
Maiko Yamamoto, Dawn Petten, and Veda Hille dig into legendary songs for streamed edition
They’re ba-a-a-ck: the East Van chickens are some of the returning characters in Panto Come Home! Photo by Emily Cooper
The Cultch and Theatre Replacement present Panto Come Home! from December 17 to 27
THE EAST VAN PANTO has been a wildly loved annual tradition for pop-culture-loving families since debuting in December of 2013. And this year, in a pandemic reimagining of the show called Panto Come Home!, familiar faces are revisiting some of its greatest hits. But as unforgettable as many of its musical parodies have been over the years, the all-time favourite dates back to the beginning.
That’s when Dawn Petten, playing the giant’s deranged, off-tune Welsh harp in Jack and the Beanstalk, sang the now infamous “Cheese Song”. Dreamed up by Veda Hille, it was a warped meld of Whitney Houston’s acrobatic cover of “I Will Always Love You” with the famous patter-song part of “Figaro’s Aria” in Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. The revised lyrics name-dropped every kind of cheese that any deli-going Drive resident would know, highlights including: “Mozzarella and cheddar/And feta and gouda/Parmesan, queso, and brie”, with the over-emotive chorus, “But I-I-I will always love blue-oo-oo-oo.”
As clever as it was catchy, “Cheese Song” has gained Petten legit East Van street cred over the years.
On a Zoom call with Theatre Replacement director Maiko Yamamoto and music director Hille, Petten notes many kids have now grown up with the East Van Panto. And a lot of them have never forgotten the moments they’ve loved best.
“In the spring, it was Bike to Work week, and I was biking down the Adanac path and they had one of those little stands where this 16-year-old was handing out bananas,” recalls Petten. “He said, ‘You were the harp! You sing “The Cheese Song!” Take two bananas!’ Those songs stick with the kids.”
You’ll hear her perform East Van Panto’s tongue-twisting ode to fromage when Petten rejoins cast members from over the years for 2020’s livestreamed pandemic edition of the popular holiday show.
“‘The Cheese Song’ sticks with so many people--but not with me!” reveals the Panto veteran. “I had to learn it all over again. My hard drive clears after every show.”
“But you’re slaying with ‘Cheese!’” interjects Hille.
Yamamoto, who starred as that first Jack and now returns to codirect with James Long, says her team has wanted to do a Panto retrospective for years; at one point, there was even talk of a Christmas album of some of Hille’s best hyperlocal workings of well-known songs. “We could have easily done a four-hour show for our own pleasure,” says Hille, who’s been as likely to parody the Human League and Taylor Swift as German cabaret numbers or the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.
Patti Allan, Allan Zinyk, Maiko Yamamoto, and Dawn Petten in the original East Van Panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, back in 2013. Photo by Emily Cooper
That wealth of material speaks directly to the success of the show. Back when Jack and the Beanstalk launched the newly renovated and reopened York Theatre, no one knew if people would get Theatre Replacement’s uniquely East Vancouver spin on old British pantomimes.
“We really had no idea,” says Yamamoto. “There was this slow growing buzz. But even opening night we were going, ‘What are we doing?’”
What they were doing, as it turns out, was launching one of the city’s most popular theatre shows, more than tripling attendance in five years and selling out every day of month-and-a-half holiday-season runs.
“It really has become the most joyous production we do,” Yamamoto says of the Theatre Replacement schedule. “Everybody is working so hard, and on opening night I always break out in tears--uncontrollably! It’s just from the sheer joy of it.”
For the close-knit theatre family that puts on the Panto each year, it also means a lot of work at a time when most people are in full Christmas-vacation mode, guzzling Avalon Dairy eggnog and decorating shortbread cookies.
“It has changed our holiday season significantly,” Yamamoto allows. “I sometimes dream about ‘What if you could just take off and fly somewhere?’ Before COVID, anyway. But it’s a worthy sacrifice because it’s so fun.”
Maiko Yamamoto and Dawn Petten when they starred in East Van Panto: Hansel and Gretel, in 2015. Photo by Tim Matheson
For her part, Hille has loved digging into her back catalogue of songs to pull out favourites, updating the lyrics a bit so their usual political jabs and pop-culture shout-outs speak to 2020. (At press time she was still hoping to work in a “WAP” number for Tik Tokkers to bust a move to at home.)
“The thing I was most excited about was having a chance to look at each Panto and ask, ‘Why was my favourite always the bad guy?’” she says. “The bad guy also gets the best song. So this year we’re doing a bad-guy medley. It’s nutbar. It’s a bit of a highwire act.”
As much as no one likes to play favourites with their children, does Hille have one black-hatted song-and-dance number that she loves more than the rest? Is it one by Allan Zinyk’s spandex-swathed West Van Fitness Queen in Snow White? Or by Andrew McNee’s “devilishly handsome” Big Bad Wolf in Red Riding Hood?
Veda Hille
It turns out to be Zinyk’s hippie “Sandwitch” singing about “coo-coo-coo-cooking a kid” to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” in Hansel and Gretel. “Whenever I think back to doing that song, with the lights and the gingerbread people…” Hille says, trailing off as she pictures the blackly comedic showstopper.
In fact, this Panto will have its own new villain. The setup for the show is that Yamamoto and Long discover a sad, pyjama-clad Hille waiting out the pandemic by living at the York Theatre and playing its piano—not too far a stretch, considering she’s been acting as “pandemic artist-in-residence” at the Cultch since full spring lockdown.
“It turns out he’s watched every single Panto show,” says Yamamoto of the new character. That inspires a parade of returning personalities--from the East Van back-yard chickens to the Japadog.
Not that anything feels exactly the same this year, of course. The crew has been rehearsing with masks and fully socially distanced protocols at the theatre. Hille and her keyboard and drummer Barry Mirochnick sit safely tucked away in a Plexiglas box.
“We call it the terrarium,” Yamamoto says with a laugh, telling Hille: “You look like an art installation, actually.”
“Yes, I feel like I’m in Berlin, in Alexanderplatz, and just living there for two weeks,” Hille deadpans.
But as much as they’re joking, they admit there’s a lot they’ll miss this year. The newest round of pandemic measures mean there won’t be the usual little kids or Studio 58 students in the show. And there won’t be a packed live audience to hiss and boo, or to warn characters to “Look out behind you!”
Things are different behind the scenes as well, the trio notes. “I feel like some of the wonderful elements of theatre are missing from the show,” Petten observes. “I realize how physical we usually are with each other, patting each other on the back.”
“It’s just not being able to hug ‘goodbye’,” offers Hille. “I’m really missing that assurance. So that’s been tough.”
But knowing everyone else out there is going through the same kinds of challenges, the team seems ever-more-resolved to make this livestreamed version happen. “The Cultch has been incredible, and that allows us to do this ridiculous playtime on the internet,” says Hille of the company that runs the York.
“I feel families need the show more than ever,” adds Petten. “There’s no Stanley Park train, no VanDusen Gardens--and there’s a lot of holiday time.”
“I feel proud to do this and get it out there,” seconds Yamamoto, adding with a laugh: “As my sister said to me, ‘We have nothing else to do!’”
In the end, the production team wants to give all that East Van Panto wackiness a little extra holiday spirit to help pandemic-fatigued families get through the season.
And though you won’t be able to see her in person, rest assured Yamamoto might be crying even more tears of joy on opening night.
Find tickets and info here.
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