'Tis the Season

14 December 2003

I can't say two words about Christmas to my British friends without them throwing in the word Pantomime. You British people are always banging on about pantomimes. What the hell is a pantomime?

Anna says

Basically, Pantomime's relationship to theatre is much like that of large rich flatulent relatives to family dinners; they're loud, gaudy, tuneless, full of bad jokes, somewhat desperate to prove how hip they are and how much children love them, invariably turn up at christmas time and frequently outstay their welcome.

They're uniquely British, and not really something that the theatre-going public of other countries would put up with anyway.
I think we have tried to export the concept of pantomime, to the US, to South Africa and to various European countries, if I remember rightly.
Viewed as a novelty item, international audiences got the idea but not the point, and though pantomime audiences are encouraged to do a fair amount of shouting, they're not usually encouraged to shout things like
"What is this shit?"
or
"Fuck off back to Brtain, you cross-dressing freaks!"

Historically, pantomime has its roots in the mumming festivals of medieval England, but didn't reach its recognisable form until the mid-1700's when, with the influence of Comedia dell'arte and 'Italian Night Scenes' (the first real slapstick), they developed into much the same format as we have in pantomime today.

What is that format? Well, hold on to your to your snowman patterned socks, and suspend your disbelief for a second, because any explanation of the traditions of panto is usually met (particularly by international theatre students and practitioners) with a mixture of confusion (about why) and,... no, that's it, confusion is generally it. Sorry, I thought there was another word, but it's gone.

Anyway.

You've got a fairy story or folktale - Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Babes in the wood, anything with a central plot motif of 'boy meets girl, obstacles get in their way, boy defeats obstacles, boy gets girl'.
Even if those stories don't conventially have that central motif, they do in pantomime. Suspend your disbelief.

You've got several prescribed characters, your principal boy (hero), your heroine, a comedic sidekick to the hero, a dame (mother to one of the principal characters, usually), A baddie with a sidekick. There are also - almost always - two people inside a large and unconvincing cow or horse costume. For no apparent reason.

Boy meets girl, girl meets girl, it's all the same in Pantoland.

Historically, the principal boy has been a girl. In that the principal boy has been played by a girl, pretending to be a boy. The main reason for this was that in the Victorian age, when everyday woman wore up to 3 tonnes of clothing at once and showed no skin apart from the nose and sometimes the occasional finger, the principal boy was an excuse to dress a shapely woman in nothing but a jacket, pair of tights and big boots. In the middle of the 20th century the trend was reversed and boys played boys again, but then it swung back toward the girls and now anything goes, really.
Boy meets girl, girl meets girl, it's all the same in Pantoland.

The Mother of the principal character, or some other important woman in the plot, will be played by a fat man in a silly costume. This is the pantomime dame. S/He is a prime example of unconvincing tranvesticim, and is intended to be so. The more gaudy the make-up and costume of the Dame, the more the audience will like her.
For example in the theatre where I work, the dame comes on in one scene with a crinoline made out of brussels sprouts, a corset made of carrots and two enormous swirls of potato dauphinois for breasts. And a turkey on her head.
In another scene she wears nothing but a gaint pie, and at the end she is dressed as a christmas cracker.
She looks very silly, and this seems to make the audience happy.

Naturalism has nothing to do with Pantomime. There is no 'fourth wall'. The audience is addressed directly and consulted in times of crisis. More about this in a moment.

Thigh slapping will be done. This actually seems to be a rule.
This is people slapping their own thighs in a heroic fashion (?) rather than slapping other people's thighs. People slapping each other thighs is difficult to choreograph and quickly turns orgiastic or vicious.

The jokes must be bad. And when I say bad I mean terrible. Or beyond terrible. Right through the neighbourhood of 'not funny' and out the other side. At speed.

Half way through the first act there will be a slapstick scene.

When the main boy and girl cement their love (not as in 'they have sex', just as in 'they declare their feelings'), they will sing a slushy song about it, no matter how dire or fraught their surroundings.

There will probably at some point be a ghost. The kind in a big white sheet. It will approach the hero from behind and go 'Whoooooo!', the hero will not see it until the audience tell him to, if at all.

And finally - This is the thing that gets me - everyone knows what to say. It's past the point of tradition and into the area of erie.

I had never seen a pantomime until last week, and since then I have seen 15. Or the same one 15 times. I knew they were a thing that I should have seen both as a British person and a Theatre person. I'd just never got around to it.
But the thing that's dawned on me this week is the fact that everybody in the audience knows what to do. Even me, someone not used to being in an audience and shouting at the stage, within minutes I was yelling happily, alongside the 4-year-old who'd never been to the theatre before and the international student who had no idea what was going on but shouted merrily anyway.

Y'see, when the baddie comes on, you boo, or hiss. You may not know they're the baddie, but if they're lit in green and has rather severe make-up, boo and hiss anyway, you'll probably be right. When the baddie says anything bad about the hero or heroine, you boo. When the baddie sings a song, no matter how good they sing, you boo.

If anyone asks 'We don't want that, do we boys and girls?' shout 'No!'. The only people that shout 'Yes' at this point are teenagers trying too hard to be cool and grown-ups trying too hard to be post-modern.

If anyone shouts "Hello boys and girls", shout hello back, and use their name.
If a goodie asks you where someone is hiding, shout the truth.
If a baddie asks you, you all simultaniously lie.

If anyone asks you 'We don't want that, do we boys and girls?' shout 'No!'. The only people that shout 'Yes' at this point are teenagers trying too hard to be cool and grown-ups trying too hard to be post-modern.

If anything bad is sneaking up behind someone we like, point and shout and tell them so, using the words "Behind you". Obviously.

If anyone on stage says, 'Oh no they haven't/it isn't/I don't', the audience must disagree, loudly and all together; 'Oh yes we have/it is/you do', and the argument goes on exactly like that, with no hope of resolution, no hint of logic and for ever.

If anyone tells you to get up and dance and sing along, do it, or they'll break your legs.

At the end of the play, or at some point, cheap bolied sweets might be thrown from the stage into the audience. This will cause general rioting amongst the younger more idiotic members of the audience. If you do not come into that category (you are, for example, over 25 and a junior doctor) it's not fair to join the scramble for sweets. Nor is it dignified.

Christ, I've barely scratched the surface, but I think I've explained the basics of pantomime,
"Oh no you haven't"
Oh yes, I have, I think.
"Oh no you haven't."
Yes, I have. As I was saying, I'd never actually seen one til last week, so that's just about all I know that's worth telling. And that, I think, is the end.
"Oh no it isn't..."
Oh, shut up.

Meg says:

What she said, only with a sprinkling of Australian soap stars as the principal boy/girl, a washed-up D-list camp British entertainer as the dame, someone semi-famous and incapable of acting (sports star; big brother contestant) as the fairy godmother/genie, a song and dance routine grown from the Italian tradition of Commedia Dell'Arte, plenty of political/current affairs references (the mummers, again, engaging in a little bit of satire) and a slapstick set piece, usually involving pies.

All in all, a jolly good afternoon out. Oh no it isn't... etc etc etc.

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14 December 2003

I can't say two words about Christmas to my British friends without them throwing in the word Pantomime. You British people are always banging on about pantomimes. What the hell is a pantomime?

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