All the way from Oz for panto in Portsmouth
Alex Scott Fairley – who will be our villainous Abanazar in Aladdin at Portsmouth’s New Theatre Royal this Christmas – certainly won't be popping home for Christmas Day.
He and his partner moved to Tasmania in May this year.
“But panto is not a massive thing in Australia these days possibly because Christmas falls in high summer and trying to get people into a theatre in high summer isn't exactly easy. But panto is something for me that I have always enjoyed in my professional life. I just love doing it and obviously for a lot of people it's their first experience with theatre and also it just feels like pretty much the only British theatre tradition that we do still have left. And it's lovely that you get all the families together at this time.
“I have worked with Jordans who do the panto in Portsmouth for a number of years and they have always been very good to me, and so when they asked me about doing this one it felt like a nobrainer to come back but also I have family on the south coast and it'll be great to see them again.
“And it's great to be playing the baddie. I always seem to play the baddie. One year I was a dame and many, many years ago I was the prince but generally I am the baddie and I think that the baddies have the most fun. They get to be vile to everybody and they usually have the best lines but also baddies are so interesting to play. They have to be some sort of threat and scary enough to give people some kind of frisson but they must not be absolutely terrifying! So it's a line that you have to get right and that makes it really interesting to do.”
And then it will be back to Australia: “I live in Tasmania. My partner is Australian and when we met pre-covid and before the world went a bit mad we had originally discussed moving to Australia. We both love Scotland and I had been working there a lot and we settled there for about five years but Covid meant that he had not seen his family for ages and so we considered it. We originally came here because we're both very much into nature and self-sufficiency and we had originally been offered the chance to take over a farm in Tasmania. We moved over but on arrival we discovered that the farm had been pretty much obliterated by flooding last year and getting any insurance would have been hell so we had to recalculate. But we arrived in midmay and it was interesting going from the start of spring in the UK to the start of winter here and now for me who has spent most of his life in the northern hemisphere it feels absolutely obscene to be talking about temperatures of 28 on Christmas Day!”
Not that he will be getting that on Christmas Day in Portsmouth, of course, but afterwards it will be back to Australia where he will start to think more seriously about getting work over there: “Most of the theatre in Australia is maybe concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney and in the New Year I'll be looking to work there.”
Tickets from the venue.