Article: Tis’ the Season to watch Panto

If we were to sit down and play a category game, where you must list as many things you can think of on one particular subject, it is inevitable if you were to say Christmas that it won’t take too long before the word Panto came up, but why? If you sit back and look at it, it’s one of the most bizarre genres of drama to plague all of our theatres each year. The story is a well-known fairytale, where cross-dressing is cheered on, it has the continuity level of a Monty Python sketch and trying to explain it to anyone non-British it can be as painful as trying to teach Japanese to a horse. Yet every winter hoards of children, mums, dads, grannies, granddads, distant relatives and as I’ve encountered over the years strange old men on their own, pack out our theatres for  the Christmas season booing, singing and shouting ‘it’s behind you!’. It just doesn’t quite add up, you wouldn’t go along to the lion king and boo Scar when he says he’s going to kill Mufasa, nor would it be appropriate to shout ‘Oh no he isn’t’ when Elphaba talks about how wonderful the wizard of Oz is. For what would be seen to the rest of the world as a niche market why do we love it so much?

Pantomime is essentially a love child derived from 16^th century Italian Comedia-dell’arte and other British stage traditions, and first developed properly coming to light in the early 1800’s. Around this time is where pantomime developed from traditional English nursery rhymes, European folk tales or classic English literature. Back then the selection included ‘the three bears’ or ‘the little man who woo’d the little maid’. But the stories we know today began to take shape in Theatre Royal Drury Lane thanks to the famous clowning actor Joseph Grimaldi; Grimaldi dominated the development of pantomime through his portrayal of Harlequin. By the 1800’s it had become the tradition for children between Christmas and New Year to attend the theatre to primarily see the farce of the Harlequin chase scene, which contained the slapstick and excitement of the modern pantomime we see today.

Following through the next 200 years pantomime has in my opinion beautifully developed into what we see before us today. It can take any shape or form, ranging from the near £1,000,000 professional productions of magically appearing fairies and flying carpets, to a £500 village hall production when the dame’s balloon breast bursts and whizzes through the room and lands in an elderly woman’s plastic cup of mulled wine. But when it comes to pantomime this is the point I can’t emphasize enough, when it comes to special effects and 20 piece orchestras at the end of the day, IT DOESN’T MATTER! Last I checked I’ve never purchased a ticket to a panto because I know midway through the Genie of the lamp will fire 30ft into the air whilst they convert the stage into a functional trampoline, well that might be the pull for some people but I never care for it myself. I go along to the pantomime for two hours of fun, I hear the same jokes that make a full audience groan, the children’s excitement when they see the fairy for the first time, booing so much I rip the self-esteem out of the villain and hear the dame made jokes that would make a vicar blush.