 If you have ever wondered why the British people
relish live theatre so much and nurture the writers and actors to go
with it, you probably don't know what a "pantomime" is. Ask any of
us where we first discovered and were excited by theatre-going. Our
eyes will mist, even as we laugh and remember our childhood and that
first trip with the family to see a Christmas show of Cinderella,
Jack and the Beanstalk or whatever fairystory was being
retold onstage that impressionable year long ago.
In my youth
every town had its panto, often more than one, that toured or
stayed put in the local big theatre from December to Easter,
starring popular comedians and singers (though rarely actors) in a
farrago of theatricality. The familiar tale would be told through
jangling verse and music, with the audience joining in, thanks to a
song-sheet dropped from the flies. With children, their parents and
their parents' parents out front, all age groups and tastes had to
be catered for. So the dads would be charmed by a chorus of leggy
dancing girls and a cross-dressing hero, Prince Charming done up in
the shortest of tunics and the tightest of fishnet stockings. The
kids could marvel at the inevitable transformation scene which, like
much else, was a remnant from
Victorian pantomimes, although actual mime and characters
inherited from
commedia del arte have long since dropped away. Slapstick
scenes remain and there is much broad comedy centring on the Dame
character, usually the hero's mother, played by a man in a way that
makes it always obvious that she is a man in a frock. That's my part
in Aladdin, one of the favourite pantos, whose mother is
Widow Twankey, a single mother running — who knows why? — a Chinese
laundry in old Pekin.
Describing all this to Kevin Spacey, director of the Old Vic
Theatre, who has never seen a panto, was as tricky as explaining the
rules of cricket but it all becomes clear, I assured him, in
performance. So many disparate elements of theatre are on display —
magical scenery, dance and song and rhyme, cross-dressing, audience
participation, soliloquy — often stretching back to Shakespeare and
the origins of western theatre tradition and yet unique to Britain.
Apart from to Canada and Australia, pantomime has not exported well.
One thing is certain, pantomime is not a static art form. We
often regret that it is not as it used to be, but that is in part its
point. However ancient the story, for example, modern references
abound, often as jokes. Aladdin, in the original Arabian Nights
story, was born in old Baghdad, so we will hope to cast an actor of
Muslim origin this year at the Old Vic, although a sly suggestion that
his mother is the widow of Saddam el Twankey, "last seen holed-up in
Tikrit" may not survive! That will depend on Bille Brown, our
author, who has written a previous panto for actors like me,
The Swan Down Gloves, one of the Royal Shakespeare Company's
biggest hits 25 years back.
Meanwhile, I am doing my scales and at the back of a cupboard
recently caught sight of the tap-shoes I bought during the New York
run of Amadeus in 1980 — Ian
McKellen, June 2004
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