Collaborative post
The tradition of Pantomime is one that most of us have experienced in our lives. No matter if it’s one put on by the local Am Dram group in your village, or one put on in a seaside town featuring well-known faces from the telly, the fun and excitement felt by children of all ages, cannot be denied.
Of course, if you are really lucky, you’ll have bought your London Theatre TIckets in advance, and headed for the bright lights of London town, and enjoyed star-studded performances from A list celebrities and sat in plush seats instead of plastic. But ultimately when you are a young child it makes no difference where you go, or what you see, the ritual of the screaming, the laughter and lot’s of ‘it’s behind you’ is all that matters.
Most other countries cannot understand Britain’s obsession with Pantomime, which is usually only to be seen at Christmas, but nobody can deny it’s a great opportunity for Mum’s, Dad’s, Nannys and Grandads to let their hair down, under cover of darkness and hiss and boo along with the rest of the theatre, in the certain knowledge they won’t be judged too harshly! The purpose of Pantomime is just to make you laugh and be silly for the few hours that you are in the theatre.
Everything is exaggerated, the costumes, the makeup, the slapstick and even the story, which will always be very loosely based on a fairy story or nursery rhyme. But whilst it is now a thoroughly English tradition, it’s roots lay in the streets of Italy in the 16th century, where mini theatres were set up in the market place and fairgrounds, telling stories of ill-fated love affairs, between disparate couples.
As Pantomime evolved, it began to have more of a Christmas appeal, and by the Victorian era, was more scripted and rehearsed usually containing topical content of the day and the Principal Boy was usually played by a woman, to delight the gentlemen who might otherwise have found it all a bit tiresome. Nowadays celebrities we all love to hate for whatever reason seem to enjoy adopting a sinister character for a 6 week run over Christmas and New Year, and instead of hissing and booing at them from the comfort of our armchair, we can really get stuck in with some audience participation and have them almost within touching distance.
Add to that hundreds of screaming excited children, fuelled by sugary drinks and ice cream, a few cheap jibes at some errant politicians, and a few near the mark jokes that thankfully the children just won’t ‘get’, and you’ve got a recipe for an afternoon’s great entertainment. Don’t ever underestimate the power of Pantomime it is after all often the very first encounter with theatre any child has, and it remains a magical experience, and who knows may have been the early inspiration for many of today’s actors we know and love.