It’s Behind You! Panto Season Has Arrived

“It’s behind you!” That perennial cry marks the advent of the pantomime season, which runs through December and January. WOS correspondent Mark Shenton examines a great British tradition and looks at what s on offer this year.

Pantomime – from the Greek, meaning “all-mime” – has a long and distinguished theatrical pedigree – during Roman times the term was used to refer to a dumb-show performer. But in modern day Britain, many commentators regard pantomimes simply as dumb shows; the term nowadays has an all-too-often debased currency, to denote often crassly commercialised, and only nominally theatrical, occasions that are too often a showcase for the minimal and marginal talents of minor television and sporting celebrities, such as the stars of Gladiator and worse (Page Three girls to titillate the dads).

No wonder that the genre has long deserted the West End. But up and down the land, pantomimes still flourish, a more or less guaranteed box office draw as families seek respite from the avalanche of bad television and take refuge in its live equivalent instead.

That said, in its purer forms, the pantomime does occasionally survive as an enduring legacy in particular to the Victorians who patented it as a sometimes subversive outgrowth of the music hall. In the unique world of panto, always loosely based on an existing plot (either a fairy tale or a well-known children’s story), the romantic male lead – the Principal Boy – is invariably played in breeches by a leggy woman, while the comic female role – the Dame – is taken by a male comedian. Not only does this indulge a national obsession in cross-dressing, but it also allows for greater comic liberties, at the expense of the war of the sexes, without causing offence.

As in the music halls, a certain topicality is always called for – references to current events and even musical numbers taken from today’s pop charts are de rigeur. So is the way that the plots and characters are fashioned around the talents and skills of the particular stars in question.

But pantomime isn’t the only Christmas entertainment on offer anymore. Other classic texts are being more adventurously adapted for theatrical consumption, ranging from the RSC’s version of CS Lewis‘s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (back in London, this time at Sadler’s Wells, after its Barbican success last Christmas) to a Broadway musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett‘s The Secret Garden (also being staged by the RSC, this time at Stratford-upon-Avon, prior to an expected West End transfer).

Elsewhere, the Young Vic has Alexandre Dumas‘s The Three Musketeers, the Lyric Hammersmith has a new version of Pinocchio by Billy Elliot‘s screenplay writer Lee Hall, and at the West End’s Queen’s Theatre, there s an adaptation of JR Tolkien‘s The Hobbit. Original plays are also being fashioned out of classic stories, like Cinderella, adapted to Cinderella – The Ash Girl at Birmingham Rep by celebrated playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Lucy Bailey (who was responsible for the Birmingham production of Baby Doll, subsequently seen at the National and in the West End).

Other theatres go a musical route during the festive season, with choices ranging from traditional musicals – like the National’s re-run of their summer hit, Singin’ in the Rain, to the classic British musical Half a Sixpence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds – or operatic, like London’s Drill Hall who are presenting Rossini’s Cinderella in a new version presented by the adventurous Music Theatre London company.

Whatever your taste, it s bound to be accommodated somewhere this Christmas. Subversively, perhaps, the RSC are even offering a real antidote to Christmas by opening their production of Richard II in London just four days before it. So if your seasonal mood is more “Bah! Humbug!” than “It’s Behind You!”, that might be just the ticket.