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In Defence of PantomimeDateline: 17th December, 2006There are those - even some whom I count among my friends - who denigrate pantomime, who see it as something cheap and tawdry or, at best, regard it as nothing more than light entertainment for the unthinking. Recently I've done a number of radio interviews on the subject and I am constantly being asked if panto is dying, the unspoken suggestion being that it has no place in a sophisticated society like ours. It's all nonsense! Far from being finished, panto is as popular as ever, with productions in most professional theatres in the country, productions by small professional touring companies and even more productions by amateur dramatic and amateur operatic societies up and down the country. Within a ten mile radius of where I am sitting as I write this, there are four professional theatre-based pantos, three touring pantos and five amateur shows. And they are just the ones I know about. And half of the circle of which that radius is part consists of the North Sea, so that's an area of just over 150 square miles - one panto for every 13 square miles. Except, of course, that the touring shows reach into every nook and cranny of the region - my own touring show is going to eighteen venues within that area (and another twelve outside it). And the theatre-based shows rarely play to houses of less than 80% and usually to more than 90%. No, panto is not dying. It is as healthy as ever. So what is its appeal? A girl dressed as a boy falls in love with a girl dressed as a girl, helped (or hindered) by a man dressed as a woman. And everybody knows the story, so there's no suspense. And the actors burst into song and dance for no obvious reason. And the audience spend almost as much time shouting and joining in as they do watching. What on earth is all that about? The origins of panto lie hundreds of years ago in the Italy of the sixteenth century and in medieval England, in the Commedia dell'Arte and the English Morality Plays. In fact, I go so far as to trace its history back to the Fabulae Atallanae of the first century BC but others have dsuggested that was an origin too far, so we'll not go any further into that. What is certain is that it was the Commedia which developed into the Harlequinades of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and out of the Harlequinades grew panto as we know it in the nineteenth. What they have in common is physical and slapstick comedy (the very word "slapstick" comes from the implement which Harlequin carried), reference to (and often satire on) the local area and its well-known personages, music and dance, stock characters - most of which, incidentally, could be found in the Old Comedy of Roman playwright Plautus. Much of what we see on stage in pantos nowadays derives from this long past. The man we see as the Comic today (Buttons, Wishee-Washee, Silly Billy, Idle Jack) derives from the characters created by Joseph Grimaldi (1778 - 1837) and our Dame (whose origins lie in the Morality plays and the "Betty" of the Morris Dancers) was created by Dan Leno (1860 - 1904). Even the "baddie" (such as King Rat or Abanazar, can be traced back to the Vice of the Morality plays (mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night). The female principal boy goes back to the eighteenth century "breeches parts" in theatre and opera (such as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro) - and even "his" thigh slapping dates back to 1837 when it was first done by Madame Vestris playing Ralph in Puss in Boots. The question radio interviewers always ask is "Do you think that including soap stars or reality TV people means the end of panto?" At the end of the nineteenth century people were howling about the end of panto because of the inclusion of Music Hall stars such as Marie Lloyd, Lottie Collins, Little Titch and so on, and the cry went up again in the 1920s when the stars of musical comedy were introduced. Then there were pop stars (like Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard) in the sixties, the stars of Gladiators, sports stars such as Ian Botham and Frank Bruno, and a couple of years ago we had Neil and Christine Hamilton in panto at Guildford! The reason panto has lasted and, indeed, is as popular as ever, is that it changes as the times change. Like all art forms - and I would argue that it is an art form - it reflects the society of which it is part. And as anyone who has ever appeared in a panto will tell you, it requires loads of energy and skill. It looks easy, but it's far from being easy, which is why those who have a talent for it last (one of the most popular principal boys in the early years of the twentieth century was Music Hall artiste Florrie Forde, whereas Marie Lloyd only did three) and those who haven't soon vanish. But let the last word go to George Bernard Shaw, who wrote in 1905, "A child who has nver seen a pantomime is a public danger"!
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