Pantomime

Pantomime, or panto, in its modern British usage, a form of entertainment based on folktales and stock characters, popular during the Christmas period with family audiences and children. For many people the annual trip to their local theatre to see pantomime is their only experience of theatre-going. The custom is peculiar to the British Isles, where people not only go to see spectacular professional pantomimes, presented lavishly with stars from television and stage, but also produce and appear in their own, in village halls, schools, and amateur theatres.

Twentieth-century British pantomime developed from the 18th-century harlequinade, with its mix of dance, music, and slapstick comedy. Characters such as Mother Goose, still a panto favourite today, were familiar to 18th- and early 19th-century audiences through the performances of the great clown Joseph Grimaldi at Drury Lane Theatre, and his act inspired many routines and panto traditions. Familiar stories, including Cinderella, Dick Whittington and his Cat (also known as Puss in Boots), Babes in the Wood, and Aladdin, were adopted from folktales or fairy stories and survive intact today, although jokes and topical remarks are constantly added to their scripts. Part of the enduring popularity of pantomime is the familiarity of its scenarios and characters. This extends even to specific comic routines, which have been handed down from comedian to comedian in a line that is traceable to masters of the art such as Grimaldi, Dan Leno, and, in the 20th century, Douglas Byng. The audience seizes any opportunity to join in, with familiar cries and responses such as “It’s behind you”, and “Oh no it isn’t”, “Oh yes it is”.

By the late 19th century pantomime had become dominated by music hall stars—Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley, for example, both donned breeches as Principal Boy (the hero, a male character traditionally played by an actress)—and this tradition continues today, with television celebrities and soap opera stars making guest appearances in almost every professionally produced panto. In the 1960s pop stars such as Cliff Richard, Cilla Black, and Lulu starred at the London Palladium; in the late 1980s sports celebrities such as heavyweight boxer Frank Bruno (as Aladdin’s Genie of the Lamp) and Ian Botham took to the panto stage, and in the 1990s there was a tendency for the stars of successful Australian television soap operas to spend the Christmas season in Britain.

For British audiences, two of the most endearing elements of pantomime are its cross-dressing and its tendency towards camp. On one hand, the Principal Boy, played by a woman, is elegant, romantic, and heroic, while on the other, the Dame, played by a large ungainly man, is a figure of fun and grotesqueness. The Dame, in the form of characters such as Widow Twankey, Mother Goose, Sarah the Cook, and the Ugly Sisters, is one of the great figures of popular culture and shares the comic territory occupied by British seaside-postcard humour, the traditions of music hall, and mother-in-law jokes. In the 20th century, male performers such as Arthur Lucan, Douglas Byng, Arthur Askey, and Les Dawson excelled as the bawdy female clown and there seems to be no shortage of actors willing to don the outrageous persona; indeed, some make a specialism of Dame roles, appearing year after year.