FROM information overload in the rehearsal room to swashbuckling villainy on stage, Bath Theatre Royal’s 2025 pantomime team are hard at work, preparing for the big opening next week, still learning lines, routines, dance steps, songs and music …
‘You have information coming at you from every angle,” says Bath favourite, script-writer and comedian Jon Monie. “We have a bigger cast than usual this year, there are a lot of us on stage – and everyone is a delight.”
The rehearsal time for this year’s show, The Further Adventures of Peter Pan: The Return of Captain Hook, is just two weeks! Actors preparing for a play at the National Theatre or the Royal Shakespeare Company may have six weeks or more, and most plays being prepared for a run or on tour will have about a month.
But tight turnaround and minimal rehearsal times are no great challenge for Tristan Gemmill, making his Bath pantomime debut as evil Captain Hook. As well as many stage and film credits, his lengthy and impressive small screen CV includes years in both Casualty and Coronation Street, playing the Street’s bistro owner Robert Preston and Emergency Consultant Dr Adam Trueman in the long-running hospital series.
“We only rehearsed on the day for Coronation Street,” he recalls, “so you had to know your lines. There was a bit more practice for the medical scenes in Casualty.”
Jon, one of the West Country’s best-loved comedians, improvisers and actors, took over writing the Bath pantomime script after the death of his friend and mentor and the region’s finest Dame, Chris Harris. Over the years, Jon has become a brilliant writer, whose scripts, originally staged in Bath, are now on all over the country. This year there are about six at theatres around the UK, including his Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. He doesn’t get to see them, because of the dates of the Bath run, but he doesn’t really want to: “Every venue adapts my scripts to make it their own,” he says, recognising that he might not necessarily agree with what they have done!
Tristan, who has played Hook before, at Swansea in 2019, is very impressed with Jon Monie’s script. “I love the way Jon has constructed it – he has a really good ear for dialogue, rhythm and tempo. It is a really rich script – but of course it has its silly moments too!”
Approaching Peter Pan for the 2025 show, Jon decided to bring a contemporary edge to the familiar JM Barrie story. So it begins with a feisty young woman, addicted to social media and always on her screen, being visited by a fairy. The girl is Emily, the great great-granddaughter of the original Wendy Darling, who is still alive and now 104 years old. Tinkerbell has come to London because Peter Pan needs help and she wants to find the only person who can do it. It’s a big adventure for Emily, who is going to discover what life is like without her constant companion, the smart phone!
Many of the familiar JM Barrie characters will be making an appearance, including the clumsy, comical Smee (Jon Monie), Tinkerbell (Holly Atterton), glamorous Ethel the Mermaid (Sarah Jane Buckley), and courageous Peter (Marcus J Foreman). Other performers include comedy acrobats The Nitwits, as the pirate crew, and the Dorothy Coleborn School of Dance.
Tristan, whose last visit to Bath was a leading role as an aggressive juror in the courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men, says Hook is “an equally shouty man”. He loves the Theatre Royal – “one of the most beautiful theatres in the country” – and is really looking forward to the pantomime run. He lives near Bath and can commute in daily. His wife and three teenage children will all be coming to see him – and hopefully adding their rebellious boos to the audience noise.
The Further Adventures of Peter Pan: The Return of Captain Hook runs from Thursday 11th December to Sunday 11th January.
Photographs by Stuart McPherson