Fighting fairies bring out the best in each other
Love It or List It’s Hilary Farr, comedian Paul Constable join Sleeping Beauty cast
In a dressing room inside the Elgin Theatre, two archrival fairies are verbally sparring in front of lighted mirrors, beside a rack of bright, sparkly costumes.
“He brings out the worst in me,” says Hilary Farr about the castmate sitting across from her. Farr plays Malignicent, the villain in Sleeping Beauty, the latest pantomime by Ross Petty Productions that begins previews this week. Farr describes her as “truly evil from start to finish.”
“And that’s even when we’re not running scenes,” quips Paul Constable, who’s the angel to Farr’s devil as the fairy-godmother-in-training SparkleBum.
In the 21st season of the Ross Petty pantomime, returning to the Elgin with a musical, family-friendly riff on a beloved fairy tale, both of these fairy foes are making their panto debuts.
Constable, a former Second City comedian and Canadian Tire spokesperson, is taking over the Bum family name from Dan Chameroy, who originated the crowd favourite character Plumbum in the 2008 Petty panto of Cinderella. This year, Chameroy is appearing in a different drag role as Miss Trunchbull in Mirvish’s Matilda, so Constable is taking on the garish, full-figured persona of SparkleBum, a distant relative of Chameroy’s Plumbum.
“There are certain auditions where you read the lines and think, ‘Oh, I’ll really have to act for this one.’ But strangely enough, with a cross-dressing fairy, I’m comfortable with it. It’s a ballpark I’m comfortable playing in,” says Constable, who grew up around farcical British comedies like The Benny Hill Show and the style of humour that the panto emulates.
Farr, an interior designer and co-host of HGTV’s Love It or List It, also has major ‘boos’ to fill. She’s taking over the role of the panto villain after Ross Petty retired from it last year. Over the past 20 years, Petty’s (often cross-gendered) antagonists grew so legendary that they drew hisses from the audience at every entrance.
“I’ve chosen not to be in any way daunted, overwhelmed, worried, nervous or any of that. I just have to make it my own,” Farr says. “I’m different from Ross because my evil is so purely evil. Truly. There’s no ‘wink, wink.’ ”
While Petty always seemed in on the joke and revelled in the boos from the audience, Farr is not afraid to earn the audience’s loathing — different from the way she charmed TV audiences with her off-the-cuff banter with Love It co-host David Visentin. Returning to the stage after years on the small screen (her last singing role was on London’s West End in Grease with Richard Gere in 1973), she had to get used to memorizing lines again.
“And not only that, but it’s being in the right place when you say your lines.
“And . . . it’s making sure you say the right lines so that other people can pick up their cues. And then it’s finding out that when you do this (gesture) something’s going to fly in or fly out,” she says. “So yeah, much harder.”
Constable says this is the biggest “bang for your buck” stage show he’s ever been in.
He and Farr are tasked with managing between the visual effects, while singing, while dancing, while making sure they are doing their predeces- sors justice.
Even Farr admits she underestimated what she was agreeing to when Petty asked her to take over for him at last year’s panto closing night party.
But both Constable and Farr are eager to get in front of the panto’s young audiences for their respective cheers and jeers.
“I grew up with panto; it’s an English tradition,” says Farr, who was born in Toronto but grew up in London, England. “But I think what’s different about this one is that it’s so completely over the top. It’s huge. It has nothing to do with reality and it’s fabulous.”