The RIP John Inman thread linked to an article which mentioned that he was very active in pantomime. Which reminded me - I’ve always wondered what English pantomime is about. I’ve seen references to it in Agatha Christie and some other English novels, but the references are always ellipitical - they assume the reader already knows what pantomime is about.
Is it mainly aimed at kids? is it seasonal (e.g. - Christmas)? is there always someone in drag? are there set pieces, or is it improvisational?
(I’ve addressed this to English Dopers because I’ve never seen any references to pantomime in Scots or Irish settings - but if it’s more widespread in Britain and not just an English thing, would be interested to know about that as well.)
Okay, this is gonna be hard to explain, and even harder to understand.
Panto is a tradition that has built up over 100’s of years of British theatre. We do it this way because that’s the way we do it.
Major traditions include transvestism - males playing females, females playing males. Middle-aged women are always played by men, known as the Pantomime Dame. eg Aladdin’s mother, Widow Twanky is ALWAYS played by a man. The young male lead, eg Aladdin, Peter Pan, etc is ALWAYS played by a young woman. The love interest, however, is always played by a young woman. Thus Wendy to Peter Pan is always female.
There’s a tradition of audience participation. The characters are always aware that they are onstage and there’s an audience watching them.
Assasin tiptoes up behind Aladdin
AUDIENCE : He’s behind you.
Aladdin look arround. Assassin ducks behind tree.
Aladdin (to audience) : Oh no, he’s not.
Audience : Oh yes he is.
Aladdin : Oh no he’s not.
Audience : Oh yes he is
etc.
To answer your other questuions, yes it’s seasonal. Mostly it’s around Christmas, and yes it’s aimed at kids, although there are always jokes that the parents will get, but the kids won’t.
One of my earliest memories is seeing Jon Pertwee (yes, Doctor Who) as Aladdin’s wicked uncle in Pantomime.
Yes, it’s seasonal - theoretically Christmas, but there’s nothing inherently tied up with the holiday, so it’s often after the New Year. The shows range from big very-professional productions, with B-list celebrities, down to local village-hall attempts.
It’s a fully-scripted show, using one of a number of children’s stories. Depending on the story, there’s various cross-dressed characters: in Cinderella, Prince Charming is played by a woman, but the Ugly Sisters by men. Whatever the story, the men in drag are a true comedy duo, against the rest of the cast being relatively-straight. There’s a vast array of audience participation moments…booing at nasty characters…getting a few kids on stage and giving them a present…etc. There’s also plenty of random things which have nothing to do with the story, but an excuse for some slapstick (the ugly sisters baking a cake, maybe), or whatever. A few topical jokes, and a couple of risque ones (as said before, deliberately tailored so that the kids are saying “why’s dad laughing?”)
Much of the humour comes from it being one huge big cliche. Everyone knows what to expect, from beginning to end.
And the occasional A-lister. Ian McKellen’s Twanky was the toast of London. Panto is popular in Scotland, and as far as I know is identical in form to that in England.
Other traditions: it’s a musical, usually with comedy numbers, often a couple of sappy romantic songs; there’s audience participation singalong, sometimes with familiar songs, sometimes with familiar songs with altered words, sometimes songs written for the panto.
Apparently a lot of it goes back to the commedia de’larte, which informs a lot of ancient British entertainment forms. It also picked a lot up from Victorian and Edwardian music hall, and also reflects popular contemporary culture, with topical jokes. All of the characters are caricatures, often of themselves. The audience is “in” on most of the jokes and traditional responses too.
Even in professional pantos, the intended spirit is of a very amateurish, audience-aware show, with risqué jokes, intended to go above the kids’ heads. Ad-libbing, corpsing, and hamming is encouraged.
There must be one or two movies (or even TV shows) where panto is a theme. Of course, Peter Pan has been made into a movie several times, but the panto elements are pretty hidden in those movies. I remember an old episode of The Bill where they put on a pantomime, but that might be hard to find in the US or Canada. If the Britdoprs can think of one, that might help Northern Piper understand the concept.
The play will also always be a well-known fairy tale. Popular ones include:
Aladdin
Dick Whittington
Babes in the Wood
Peter Pan
Cinderella
Jack and the Beanstalk
Robin Hood
Pantomimes at mainstream theatres across the country will feature a cast of D-List televison celebrities (e.g. popular soap actors).
The main characters include:
The Dame - always a middle-aged male actor dressed in increasingly outlandish outfits that he changes frequently through the performance. The Dame is generally the main character’s mother or something like that. The actor will usually be very well-known as an actor to the audience (e.g. Sir Ian McKellen playing Widow Twanky in Aladdin, or a camp actor who is famous for playing pantomime dames). The Dame is the most popular character in the play. The Dame will at some stage engage in flirting with one of the older male support characters.
The male lead - always played by a 20 something attractive female actor in a very short tunic with tights to show off her legs. She will engage in much thigh slapping of said legs.
The female love interest - played by another attractive 20-something female actor, who will, at some stage, embrace and marry the male (female) lead.
The villain - played by a 30-40 something male actor.
There will usually be some kind of male slapstick comedy duo, playing the main leads’ sidekicks or the Dame’s kitchen helpers or something.
There will be a whole troupe of dancers/actors/singers.
The audience will at some stage be pelted with sweets/waterpistols/flour.
There will always be set pieces that include well-known dialogue. ‘He’s behind you’. ‘Oh no he’s not, oh yes he is’. The actors will instruct the audience on what to do.
As an example of in-jokes meant for the adults in the audience, my company went to a panto for our Christmas party (it was Dick Whittington). At some stage some of the play takes place on a boat, with lots of jokes about ‘Seaman Stains’ and ‘Master Bates’. I seem to remember one joke about a sailor who’d gone overboard. ‘There’s a whale! He’s followed the Seaman’, or something like that.
Ha! My 5th-grade teacher, Ms. Guy, was really big on theater. We put on a pantomime production of Dick Whittington And His Cat for our school’s Christmas show, with all the group singing and the slapstick and the cross-dressing… I played Dick (oh yeah, we had fun with that name). Unfortunately, the guy who was supposed to play the head cook (I can’t quite remember what the character’s name was) left for his holidays before the show, so that role ended up being played by a girl; a shame, he was really looking forward to it, too. Whenever the main bad guy–eh, gal came on stage, the audience was instructed to boo and hiss, and whenever the Lord Mayor’s daughter came on stage, everyone would clap and cheer.
Oh, man, that takes me back. Wicked awesome. I remember being wildly jealous that I didn’t get to take part in the slapstick scene. We used up about three or four litres of half-melted vanilla ice cream for that one. Good times.
Glasgow, and to a lesser extent, Edinburgh, has its own distinctive tradition. In fact, if anything, it’s a bigger deal there than it is in England.
The basic format was/is the same, but, in the not-so-distant past, they had their own major, local stars, such as Stanley Baxter, Jimmy Logan, Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy. Ok, so there are major pantomine stars in England - John Inman being an obvious case in point - but they tend to be TV stars first and have national reputations. The Scottish stars, in contrast, were mostly major theatre comics before they became TV stars, and most of them were much more famous in Scotland than they ever were elsewhere (Stanley Baxter being the obvious exception). Their importance is that, in retrospect, they - and their pantomines - can now be seen as the last survivals of the famous (or even infamous) Glaswegian music hall tradition. The locals still take a certain pride in that.
My Dad used to play the music (synthesiser) for a small theatre company that put on a panto. (He sat to one side between the front row and the stage.)
I remember how he carefully covered the instrument with a tarpaulin just before the Ugly Sisters (as usual two men in drag) came on to ‘bake a cake’.
Of course this was an excuse to cover the stage and the front rows with flour, which is why the instrument was protected.
But I felt a surge of pride when Dad leapt into action halfway through the scene with a water-pistol and exchanged fire with the Ugly Sisters!
Interesting. I know nothing about any kind of theater, but is this where Disney got the formula of having a couple slapstick idiots for comic relief is most every thing?
suddenly, the drag aspect of Monty Python is starting to make more sense - it sounds like a natural outgrowth of the cultural traditions of panto - I’m sure there’s a Master’s thesis in there somewhere…
Whenever the main bad guy–eh, gal came on stage, the audience was instructed to boo and hiss, and whenever the Lord Mayor’s daughter came on stage, everyone would clap and cheer.
