MADELEINE McMahon is back on The Courtyard stage in her fifth panto, playing a baddie, the Wicked Witch, for only a second time.

"My very first year here was as a baddie, and I do relish being evil," she admits. "I love panto because it's genuinely successful theatre for all the family, and not something that children have to be dragged to or that parents reluctantly accompany their children to.

"There's something ingrained in the British character that loves panto, and it's strange that it's stuck here as it was born out of French and Italian tradition, like comedia del arte.

"It has a very self-referential sense of humour - we all know the rules and half the joy is setting up those rules and then breaking them."

Madeleine is a freelance actor - she has just finished doing a Philip Ridley play, which she says "was very dark and altogther different (to panto)."

You know what you are going to get with panto and there is a specialness about it. It's brilliantly written by Lyndsay (Maples) and Estelle (van Warmelo) as director wants it to be different.

"It's a bit dark, and I like the darkness. It is a sad story. But panto is very honest and offers hope that good will prevail in the end."

Madeleine observes that it's the dame who drives the show and says: "Jason knows so much about panto and watching him last year (his first time playing the dame) was a joy. I'm really excited about this show. It feels like coming home."

Madeleine, who knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to be an actor, when she started doing amateur theatre in her home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. "I walked on stage at the Swan Theatre for the first time when I was 14 and I've spent the rest of my career trying to get back there."

Her father had found an ad for childrne to appear in a production of Oliver and after that she says, "I tried to do everything I could to get back into a show. When you're 14 and happy to get up at 8am for a rehearsal you know it's something you really want to do."