When I speak with Toby Hulse, the award-winning Writer and Director of Dick Whittington, he’s rehearsing the cast in the theatre space at Playhouse’s near neighbour, The Old Fire Station. I suggest it offers a rather nice insight into how the creative industries in Oxford work together, and Toby agrees, “yes, it's a lovely, reciprocal kind of thing.” What could be more seasonal? Peace on Earth (well, Oxford’s theatreland, at any rate) and goodwill to all. How delightfully festive.
Toby, how do you decide which story will be the Playhouse panto each year?
Like everything to do with Christmas. It's a mixture of tradition and phoning around. There are about seven titles which are the traditional ones and that group of seven has slowly expanded over years.
Obviously you want to be doing something that's different to Didcot, Swindon and Chipping Norton – we don’t want to be in competition with other places – but also, it’s what feels like it will capture something that's current. What is beautiful about these very well-known stories is the way you can put a slant on them or bring out different elements. Dick Whittington felt right for this year; it just fitted in with things I wanted to do.
And was the 90s homage inspired in any way by Oasis announcing their 2025 tour?
It was. The other poke was that for Sleeping Beauty we'd used a lot of 80s music, and I'd forgotten that I have got a bit older than I thought I was. Looking at the parents in the audience with their children I realised the music that that really resonates and speaks to them, is 90s, not 80s.
Our designer, Bronia (Housman) talks about the 30-year cycle which happens in fashion, and I started to realise the bands that I'd loved in the 90s were all doing their 30th anniversary tours, and the more I looked into the 90s, the more I realised there was a historical shift that happened somewhere then to do with the rise of the internet and social media.
From the mid 90s onwards, there's been a sort of move towards uniformity and homogeneity. You look at a group of young people now and they all look pretty much the same, whereas you looked at a group of young people in the 90s and earlier, and they didn't. I wanted in some way to capture that; to just – in a very subtle, entertaining way – make some kind of comment about that.
When you talk about uniformity, I think back to the Spice Girls, each representing and celebrating different archetypes…
We reference a mixture of Brit pop, boy bands and girl bands. We've got a bit of Blur, a bit of Oasis, some Take That, East 17, Spice Girls…we could have gone for just Britpop, but in a show that's about rejecting uniformity [we thought] let's chuck it all up in the air. It lands really nicely.
Did you compile the playlist?
I work with Steve Allen Jones, who's the composer, arranger, and we go backwards and forwards with song ideas. He's got a very broad popular music knowledge. All the songs were tested on the teenagers we work with, and they knew all of them.
We've tweaked the lyrics here and there and some are quite substantially changed: we sing Spice Up Your Life about Gloucester Green food market and all the different foods that you can buy; some remain unchanged because they do the work as they are; and some you change at your peril – you can't change the lyrics of Wonderwall, because everyone knows them so well.
I’m trying to remain scrupulously impartial, but this is sounding fantastic. Can I get away with coming along if I don’t have small children with me? How do you manage to make it appeal across the generations?
It's about taste. I call it Doctor Who theatre, because the joy of Doctor Who – if you're a fan – is on Christmas Day, there's always a Christmas Doctor Who and you'll get a seven-year-old and a 37-year-old and a 77-year-old sitting down to watch it and they're enjoying it for the same reasons.
I don't like jokes that are exclusive. I remember my parents watching Monty Python, and some of it I would understand and laugh at, and then there were the other bits my parents would laugh at, and I wouldn't get it: I felt excluded from that experience. I would never want anyone of any age to come to the pantomime and feel like there's a joke they don't get.
[That said,] you can't do Dick Whittington and not have a few bawdy gags. There's something just funny about the name. I didn't, at any point, want anyone to turn to their parents and ask, ‘Why is that funny?’ It puts the parents in a difficult situation, and I wouldn't want that to be part of, what I think, is a communal family experience.
Christmas brings groups of people together; actual families and the families you choose, and that’s in good ways and bad ways and difficult ways and glorious ways. At its heart, it’s about bringing groups of people together. And pantomime does that really, really well.
Apart from people from Swindon?
Yeah, we slip in all the jibes.
The Oxford Playhouse Panto Playlist
The One and Only, Chesney Hawks
No Limit, 2 Unlimited
Relight My Fire, Take That
Go West, Pet Shop Boys
Stay Another Day, East 17
Park Life, Blur
Let's Get Ready to Rhumble, PJ & Duncan (aka Ant and Dec)
Wonderwall, Oasis
Spice Up Your Life, Spice Girls
Everybody (Backstreet’s Back), Backstreet Boys
National Express, The Divine Comedy
Baby One More Time, Britney Spears
Dick Whittington will be on stage at the Oxford Playhouse from Friday 21 November 2025 to Sunday 4 January 2026. For tickets and further information on all upcoming performances, visit oxfordplayhouse.com.
Cast images ©Andrew Walmsley for The Oxford Playhouse
