Pantomime (theatre)

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For other uses of the word pantomine see Pantomime

In Great Britain and Australia, Pantomime refers to a type of theatrical performance.

The Christmas Pantomime: colour lithograph bookcover, 1890

In Restoration England, a pantomime was a low form of opera, rather like the Commedia dell'arte but without Harlequin developed (rather like the French Vaudeville). In 1717, John Rich introduced Harlequin to the British stage under the name of "Lun" (for "lunatic") and began performing wildly popular pantomimes. These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. Colley Cibber and his colleagues competed with Rich and produced their own pantomimes, and pantomime was a substantial (if decried) subgenre in Augustan drama.

This had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century. What remains of British, pantomime (or panto) is a non-silent form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, and satire, traditionally performed at Christmas, with audiences consisting mainly of children. (See also Christmas Pie).

Pantomimes tend to be loosely based on traditional children's stories, and there are only a small number of basic themes and titles, the most popular being:

Aladdin (combined with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves)
Babes in the Wood (often combined with Robin Hood)
Cinderella
Dick Whittington
Jack and the Beanstalk
Mother Goose
Puss in Boots
Sleeping Beauty
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Snow White

The form has a number of conventions, which include:

The leading male character (the "principal boy") is played by a young woman.
An older woman (the pantomime dame) is played by a man in women's clothing.
Risqué double entendre, often to the point of wringing innuendo out of perfectly innocent phrases.
There is a great deal of audience participation, including calls of "he's behind you", and "oh yes it is" or "oh no it isn't".
The pantomime horse or cow, which is played by two actors in a single costume – one as the head and front legs, the other as the body and back legs.

In both style and content, modern panto has very clear and strong links with Commedia dell'arte — a form of popular theatre arising in the early middle ages in Italy and reaching England by 16th century, while the gender role reversal resembles the old festival of Twelfth Night, a combination Epiphany and midwinter feast when it was customary for the natural order of things to be reversed. This tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as Samhain and Saturnalia.

Another great UK panto tradition is the celebrity guest star, a practice which dates back to the late 19th century, when Augustus Harris, proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, hired well-known variety artistes for his pantomimes. In modern times, the "celebrity" is usually somebody of doubtful value either as an actor or even as a publicity draw -- an ex-soap star trying to shore up a slipping career, for instance -- but occasionally a pantomime will feature a genuine celebrity, as with the Christmas 2004 production of Aladdin that featured Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey, which he will reprise in the 2005 production at the Old Vic theatre in London. (McKellen has become hugely famous with children as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Magneto in X-Men.)

"At least we can tell our grandchildren that we saw McKellen's Twankey and it was huge." – Michael Billington, theatre critic of The Guardian, December 20, 2004, gets into the pantomime spirit.

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