British Dopers: Tell Me More About Christmas Pantos

Cafe Society
1

I’m obsessed with the idea of the LGBTQ community in the US adopting Christmas pantos and making them their own. Put a saucy drag queen in the lead role (or make her the emcee), have her exchange witty banter with the audience, and really, the jokes write themselves.

Back in Old Blighty, are Christmas pantos generally family-friendly? Or can you find a more adult-oriented one if you’re in the mood? Who puts these things on? Like, are they just the Christmas-season offering of your local theater house’s season – after Christmas, the same troupe will be performing something else? Do community theaters put them on in smaller cities? What’s the admission charge generally like (say, in a smaller city - I imagine in London or Glasgow the ticket prices are significantly higher than in, say, Maidstone or Oldham)?

Anything else about Christmas pantos you’d like to tell me?

2

Here’s a trailer I found for a panto at one of our local theaters:

Source: Sleeping Beauty: The Pantomime - Worthing Theatres and Museum

It looks like tickets range from £10 to £26 depending on seat, with only a very small reduction for children (the principle audience of course.)

You’ll see that the dame is indeed played by a man; but the tradition of the male lead being played by a woman seems to have pretty much died out round these parts.

They’re a Xmas staple, pretty much guaranteed to sell out, and pretty much every theater puts them on - it’s what they rely on for revenue to keep them profitable. So far as I’m aware it’s just a group of actors brought together for the show rather than a troupe. Two or even three shows a day is the norm.

There are certain - uh, tropes that always occur - children shouting back Oh No She Isn’t (or similar) at the provoking villain; or Look Behind You when the hero is in imminent danger. That sort of audience interplay.

Anything else about Christmas pantos you’d like to ask me?

j

3

Fairly typical panto crowd interaction:

j

4

Yes, although they often include adult jokes which kids (hopefully) wouldn’t
understand (double entendres etc).

and yes,

and yes !
As Treppenwitz said, they’re not usually a troupe. And there’s always at least 1 “celebrity”
in the cast to draw in the crowds; maybe an actor from a soap opera, or someone who came
5th in a tv talent show or something.

5

I took the kids to an Xmas panto that brought its show here to Luxembourg a couple years ago. (Big British expat community in Lux, especially since Brexit.)

They are very silly and anarchic — loose and almost slapdash in their presentation, though that’s intentional and part of the fun. Per the preceding, there are lots of conventions and tropes that have evolved over the years and are now tradiitonal and obligatory by this point.

On this, though — what is considered “family friendly” in British terms is pretty different from the American version of family friendly. There’s lots of naughty wink-wink stuff, going up to the line of being actually rude while still being sort of mischievously deniable. “Accidental” butt-grabbing, quick off-color asides that the kids won’t catch but the grown-ups will, that kind of thing. Not nearly as risque as, like, an episode of Benny Hill, but there’s certainly a tradition of “ooo! can they say that? (fans self)” humor in British performance that would get frowned at by Americans.

They really are a beast unto themselves, and you kind of need to see one in person to understand.

6

Shall we tell the OP about our pantomimes, boys and girls?

“OH NO WE WON’T!”

7

They often contain C-list celebrities, ex-soap stars, ex-DJs, low level presenters. It’s the sort of thing a long since forgotten celebrity will pop up, such as Christopher Biggins (who was a TV presenter in the 80s, and had a small role in Rocky Horror Picture Show, ironically, a similar panto-like role in the UK shows as the narrator, hasn’t really been his thing, I think).

8

For many theatres, especially surviving local repertory theatres, panto is the big money-earner** of the year.
**Not just ex-soapstars, several actors from the Australian soaps on UK TV come over to do panto, and I don’t suppose they come cheap.

The cross-dressing thing isn’t quite the same as LGBTQ drag queen culture (being much older), though there can be overlap, of course. The “pan” part of the word means “everything” after all, and traditionally pantomime would have song and dance, slapstick and verbal comedy, “transformation scenes”, and lots and lots of audience participation*, all tacked on to a traditional children’s fairy story.

*Things like getting one side of the audience singing against the other (or mums against dads), and sometimes getting children from the audience on stage, or chucking handfuls of sweets into the audience: all sorts of silliness, provided there’s a happy ending.

Just search Youtube for some examples: I see there’s a couple of the ITV pantos, which are fairly traditional. But why not invent your own tradition?

9

I can still remember - and quote - some of the routines* in the panto (Aladdin) I was taken to aged 5.

Pantos can be found everywhere from temples of drama such as the Old Vic to local am-dram outfits and everywhere in-between. For example, this year I could see panto at the big Glasgow or Edinburgh 1000-seater theatres, the regional repertory theatre, the nearest big town’s art centre or my small town’s am-dram org putting one on in a church hall. (My daughter will be playing the coveted role of “it” in the “it’s behind you” scene in the latter, and I am totally stoked for her).

For a professional theatre, a panto with a named star can more or less sell out every house from late November to mid-January; they are essentially the economic lynchpin of British theatrical culture.

On family-friendliness, as others say there are saucy asides and double-entendres that go over children’s heads but there is an absolute art to this. You simply cannot have the adults laugh without the kids - because then the adults stop guiltily, the kids ask what’s so funny and the momentum is lost. You’ll get away with it once but it can’t be a recurring pattern. So the art of the writer is to give both adults and kids something to laugh at the same time.

A good pantomime is made by: quickfire jokes; slapstick; audience interaction; a hissable villain; just enough sentiment to make the audience cheer on the goodies; a pervading sense of anarchy that it all might be about to go wrong.

The skeleton on which these hang is: a familiar and easy to follow story; a panto dame; call and response scenes (it’s behind you, oh yes I will/oh no you won’t); comic relief character/double-act; a love song; sing-alongs; a slop scene (e.g. custard pie inna face, wallpapering gone wrong).

I’ve had a go at writing** a couple for work/fundraising and even knowing all the elements I needed to do, it was a struggle to get them all in in places where they worked.

*Comic Relief 1: I know a magic spell that will get you a lovely surprise.
Comic Relief 2: Show me then!
CR 1: You say “Busy bee, busy bee, what have you got in your hive for me” while doing the following actions.
CR 2: Show me again!
CR 1: (With actions) Busy bee, busy bee, what have you got in your hive for me? Now you go.
CR 2: Right!
CR 1: Takes big swig of drink
CR 2: Doing actions in even more OTT and ridiculous way: Busy bee, busy bee, what have you got in your hive for me? Winds up face to face with CR 1
CR 1: Jets big mouthful of drink into CR2s face
Young Stanislaus: Passes out, at this, the very acme of comedy.

**(and directed, and performed in as Ugly Sister. I am, it turns out, a massive ham.)

10

‘Babes In The Wood’, Aladdin’, ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Dick Whittington And His Wonderful Cat’ are all well-worn panto scripts.
Sir Richard Whittington really existed and was Lord Mayor of London in the 14th c., his administration appears to have been popular, honest and successful, but none of the legends associated with him have any historical basis.

11

In that respect, they sound like they’re what The Nutcracker Suite is to American ballet companies and symphony orchestras - the big traditional holiday show that funds the rest of the season.

12

From every performance of Dick Whittington :-

"20 miles to London and not a sign of Dick "

or variations thereof.

13

‘I don’t want to blow my own trumpet… that’s a lie, I can’t think of anything nicer. Think of the trouble it would save!’

Julian Clary in Jack and the Beanstalk, Palladium Theatre

Princess: ‘My Prince didn’t come.’
Super Nanny: ‘Men never come when you want them to.’

Robin: ‘Have you ever hunted bear?’
Sheriff: ‘No, I always keep my tights on.’

14

Absolutely.
So it’s family entertainment, especially for the kids (and there’s always a pretty girl just for the Dads :wink: )

15

None of which is to say of course that adult only, and indeed queer, panto doesn’t exist. e.g The Vauxhall Tavern, an absolute mainstay of London’s queer scene, does one every year.

18+, and if you like a double entendre, they’ll give you one.

16

From reading about this, it seems like the classic '60s-'80s Christmas variety special, of the Bing Crosby-esque variety, must certainly be a descendent of British panto tradition. A bunch of minor celebrities showing up one at a time to sing a holiday standard, in a loose framing narrative loosely based on a classic Christmas tale? It really doesn’t sound all that different from what’s been described.

17

They are generally put on for all the family, but always peppered with jokes that it’s assume the kids won’t understand. They definantely fly close to the edge sometimes, and nobody cares.

Yes, every local theatre, unless they are very high brow, will put on a panto at Christmas. It’s a huge money spinner them, and probably the only time of year most people go to the theatre. They cast them just like any other production, no special ‘panto’ troupes. The bigger productions will have celebrities in the main cast - I saw Sir Ian McCellan dressed in drag as Widow Twanky in London some years ago.

Probably anywhere around £30-50 a ticket

No matter which panto you put on, there are always consistent main characters - the old lady, played by a man in drag, the principal boy/love interest of the girl, which is always a woman dressed in male drag. Then there’s the evil character, and the principal girl’s comic best friend.

Loads of in jokes and sequences with the audience joining in ‘He’s behind you’ ‘Oh no he’s not’ etc.
There’s always a song which the audience joins in with - often there’ll be a screen showing the lyrics for everyone to follow.
They will throw sweets into the audience.
At some point, kids from the audience will be pulled onto the stage.

18

No, it isn’t like that. The celebrities are main characters in the cast, just like in any other play. They aren’t walk on cameos. They play for the whole season (and make a lot of money doing so).

19

Sounds a bit like a Purim spiel.

20

The episode of Extras with Les Dennis is very funny.