Creative Bertie Watkins talks new immersive adult panto ‘Dead Hard’: “We applied for a world record of most amount of dildos in a live production”

London’s Southwark area gets even gayer with the opening of this new drag parody show, turning one of the most iconic classics in film history into a different kind of… iconography. Guillermo Nazara chats with the man leading thus gang banger, to learn all the fun facts about this glittering montage – where there won’t be high heels to kick, but maybe a few boots to knock.

How did the idea for this show come about?

The idea came about because I love Die Hard, I love Drag and I love Panto – and we got a building that looked like the Nakatomi Plaza and we were potentially not going to have it by the end of 2025, so I was like ‘it must be done!’. It’s been a bit of a rush to get it on, but it’s been a lot of fun. We’re also opening the Gold Bar downstairs, which is immersive, we’re excited for that too!

Drags, adult panto, and an 80s atmosphere. Is this show going to be as hilariously filthy as it sounds?

Absolutely! And probably more so! I think every line has an innuendo in it, and we even applied for a world record of most amount of dildos in a live production… So yeah, get your strap ons…

How is all that universe going to be brought into an immersive experience?

We’ve been really playful with it. I think the glorious thing about panto is that you can lean into some disparities. We’ve got a video of ‘McClean’ staring out at what is obviously the Shard and he turns and says ‘New York, I love this city’, and it makes me laugh so much for some reason.

We’ve converted an old office block into a the Nakatomi plaza essentially, but with a whooping amount of glitter and drag silliness (my mum is literally painting a 5m willy on the wall as I’m answering this…).

We’re splitting the audience at the beginning into Nakatomi Plaza employees (who do a Wolf of Wall Street style experience) and Heisters (who do a more German Lock Stock style experience) so that they play with each other at the beginning. After that, they go and sit down as they watch a more traditional piece of theatre, but with loads of interactivity. We’ve got action men running around the ceiling with Barbies chasing him, we’ve got a turn style fight scene like the old Saga Street Fighter that the audience choose the moves, and many more silly things thrown in.  We’re doing it through the delicious characters. We had to take out one or two gun fights and replace them with glitter fights… But it’s quite true to the film, because McClean is definitely a gymbro cleaner who thinks he’s a policeman who comes to terms with his sexuality through gun fights in the original.

Does that immersive feature pose as an additional challenge?

Always. It’s because we’re an audience-first company, so we always think about the individual audience journey at all times rather than thinking of them as a whole. For this show, we’ve wanted it to be a bit wider in its appeal, so we haven’t gone to heavy on game mechanics – but we’ve still had to make a gamified beginning with a 360-degree set, and then think about audience movement for those set pieces. Immersive is always ten times more difficult than traditional, but I think it’s what audiences’ hunger for these days – and it’s what we do best, so hopefully it’ll pay off. It’s also quite boring watching a gun fight, so we’ve made them as interactive as possible so doing an action movie kind of helps with making it immersive. It’ll be a lot easier than The Cherry Orchard…

Are there any other specific challenges you’ve faced throughout its creation?

Loads, but I should say here that the cast have made every challenge an absolute joy to overcome. They’re all absolutely fantastic, and it’s been so funny working out how to do things.

I think there’s a few that stick out – the before mentioned action men were actually going to be a livestreamed video that follows McClean around as he sneaking the air vents, etc. However, we played with it and it seemed strang, so we then thought of some other ideas, and then about having action men on broomsticks crawling along the ceiling – with the actors doing the voices as the audience guide them; that was an inspired moment. We’ve practiced it, and it’s so much fun. The actors jump around the audience, and it really brings that scene alive – I love it.

Other than that, it’s just immersive being annoying. You have to paint EVERYTHING, you can’t cover stuff with curtains sometimes which is a pain, but it’ll be worth it. The whole place is pink… I dream in pink now, and so does everyone else, I think.

What other traits, do you think, make this show unique in comparison to other adult pantos?

I think all the adult pantos are absolutely fantastic! The reason I actually had a mini panto bug was because I was in Dick Whittington at the Lyric Hammersmith over a decade ago and I loved it so much. Pantos themselves are fantastic things and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t realise they weren’t an international thing at all until recently. I really think they sum up British humour.

However, ours is obviously the best, and I think it’s because it’s got that immersive flare. You get so much for your money with this one, and you won’t be cramped into a small black box: there’s two floors of show (enough to swing a drag queen on a go-kart around in…) and I think we’ve got hilarity with a lot of heart, rather than just doing P-A-N-T-O-T-OOO to a hot-to-go soundtrack (I really hope no one’s actually done that – no shade…). We’re putting our own spin on a classic British art form, and I think the two are brilliant together. It feels a lot like we’re the new kids on the block, and my god, I didn’t know how competitive it was out there but it’s fun – bring it on.

How dead hard will we get by… coming to see this production?

Harder than you can shake a glittery stick of TNT at.

Dead Hard plays at London’s COLAB Tower from 10 December to 11 January. Tickets are available on the following link.

By Guillermo Nazara