A BIT of fun that led to a global ‘hit’ and created something of a tradition in South Fremantle is back next month.

Fourth Wheel Theatre was created by South Freo locals Tim McGrath and Helen Crompton who put together podcasts in the style of old radio plays during the Covid shut-down, but since 2020 they’ve also produced an annual Christmas pantomime.

Their next production is Baking Bad on December 10, a production Mr McGrath says “re-imagines the ‘great British bake-off’ and Breaking Bad with references to local cultural icons”.

Beaconsfield resident Fiona Wheeler plays the Fairy Godmother, and while she’s perhaps not Fourth Wheel’s most gushing critic (“cringingly bad”), she reckons it’s been a hoot since she joined four years ago.

• Last year’s street panto from Fourth Wheel Theatre.

“What we do is not really learn our lines, it’s all just read off a script and Tim has recorded all the sound effects,” she said.

The pantos are so grass roots, Baking Bad is showing at “the bike stand, 400 South Terrace”.

Ms Wheeler says she first met Mr McGrath when she volunteered to be a rickshaw driver for the Cycling Without Age branch he ran in Fremantle, and was taken by his dry humour.

She joined in with the podcasts and says they do have something of a global following: “We’ve got three listeners in Botswana.”

Mr McGrath said creating the podcasts during Covid had its challenges.

“During lockdown actors recorded their parts separately and the plays were spliced together in a technique referred to as ‘Frankenstein’ production,” he said.

“Now we record them together.

Other pantos Fourth Wheel had staged include Hark the Feral, What a Waste, and A Corner Pocket Carol.

They also have a series of lighthearted podcasts available at fifthhorseman.buzzsprout.com

by STEVE GRANT