Edinburgh panto star Allan Stewart takes a tumble for Sleeping Beauty?

Cruel timing, there really is no other way to describe it.

Edinburgh panto legend Allan Stewart

Having come to terms with the fact that the King's Theatre’s panto, Sleeping Beauty, has been pushed back to 2021 thanks to the pandemic, Allan Stewart thought he’d struck lucky when he and his Leven Street sidekick Andy Gray were snapped up to join the cast of another Sleeping Beauty, in Milton Keynes, only for that show to be pulled less than 48 hours before curtain up as the English town moved into Tier 3, forcing the theatre to close its doors… and then Allan took a tumble.

Known to generations of Capital panto-goers as Aunty May, the legendary dame says, "We had an idea it was 50/50 whether Milton Keynes would go into Tier 3. It was announced on the day of our tech and dress run, which we did anyway in the hope we might be able to come back and do it at Easter instead.

"The idea was we’d know where we were standing if that happened, standing being the operative word because I fell off the stage and split my leg open. I couldn’t even finish the tech. I tired to carry on but had to drive home to see my doctor, who cleaned it up with all the antiseptic stuff.”

Allan Stewart with the cast of Beauty and the Beast

The actor, now a youthful 70 year old, laughs, as he reveals, “It’s a lovely thing for a man to say, but my heel got caught in my underskirt… it’s not something I like telling people. I was at the very back of the stage on a high platform and on the second step my heel got caught, I couldn’t put my foot down and lost my balance, falling down four steps to the floor. My shin hit a big metal piece of set and split open. It was bleeding profusely.”

Up until that moment, Allan had remained upbeat despite everything that has happened over the past ten months.

"I'm pretty good," he had said when I called him the day before the fateful decision. "When you’ve been sitting around waiting for months and then start working again, you just go, 'Wow!' It's so good to be buzzing again, to be thinking, getting your mind going."

Prophetically, he had added, "But we are all on tenterhooks because we won't know until tomorrow if Milton Keynes is going to move into Tier 3."

Had the production gone ahead, it would have been very different to the one audiences have come to expect from the King’s regulars and one aspect of the show in particular tickled Allan, his billing – playing the Queen and King, he and Andy had been billed on publicity as 'Panto Royalty'.

"I loved that, when Michael Harrison, the producer, sent the poster to me and asked, 'Are you happy with that?' Well, you can't ask for more than 'Panto Royalty', can you?"

Recalling the rehearsal period, he reflects, "On stage we had to be especially aware of the two metre rule as when we are in Edinburgh, Andy and I work closely together; I'm looking up his nose or he's about to kiss me or we're hugging. All these things had to go so we had to get used to working in a slightly different way. It had a whole different feel and we even managed to work Covid gags into our routine; strapped to my waist at all times was a two metre retractable measuring tape I’d whip out every so often to make sure the gap was maintained... except for when the Prince came on, then I'd move it to half a metre as he was so good looking."

Another thing that hadn’t changed at that point, was Allan’s plans for Christmas; he and the family had planned to head to a luxury hotel for the big day.

"That was the double blow,” he says, “We half expected Tier 3 but being Tier 4 when I got home on Saturday means that we can’t even have our traditional family holiday.”

He explains, “The plan had been that our little bubble – my son, daughter and Jane and I – were going to spend Christmas Day in a lovely hotel in Oxford. I'd intended to drive straight there after the panto on Christmas Eve.

"Normally, they all come up to me when I'm in Edinburgh and we stay at the Prestonfield, where we have our routine. First thing in the morning, the kids come over to our room and we exchange presents; I say kids, my son is 30 now and my daughter is 23, but we still have the same ritual. We never change that. We open all the presents and have breakfast and then, later, we all go down for lunch."

Those traditions will continue, he insists, only at home. “I’m trying to find food now, we’ve decided no turkey, but at least the core of the family will be together at home for the first in 15 years. I do most of the cooking but I think for something like this, Jane will do it, my son does a bit of cooking too while my daughter just sits on the phone,” he laughs.

Philosophically he adds, “You have to look at the bright side and the one thing the last nine months has taught me is that you just have to say it is what it is and the take everything as it comes to make the best of what's happening in your life at the time."