British Pantomime Performance (review)

Pantomime, the single greatest creation of British popular theatre, is a form about which those outside Britain continue to be almost totally ignorant. Whenever I talk to Americans about it, even to academic colleagues in theatre departments who are learned in thousands of years of performance across the world, I have to begin by explaining that it is not silent mime and has nothing to do with Marcel Marceau. In contrast to other forms of popular theatre, from melodrama to Broadway musicals, which have drawn the attention of theatre scholars, panto (as it is affectionately known) has lacked anything much by way of academic study. There are a few articles, but most book-length studies are commercial, not scholarly—little more than nostalgic collections of photos and chatter. There are some reference works, like David Pickering’s Encyclopedia of Pantomime (1993) and David Mayer’s Annotated Bibliography of Pantomime (1975), but Millie Taylor’s British Pantomime Performance is probably the first academic monograph on contemporary, as opposed to eighteenth century, panto to appear.

For many millions of British people, the annual family visit to the Christmas pantomime, be it Aladdin or Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Dick Whittington, is their only trip to live theatre each year. They seek, above all, a reassurance that this aspect of Christmas, like the turkey and Christmas pudding, will continue for the next generation as it has since the late nineteenth century (like most aspects of the English Christmas), when Dan Leno played the dame at Drury Lane Theatre. No wonder Ian McKellen, who grew up on a regular diet of panto, encouraged Kevin Spacey to produce Aladdin at the Old Vic Theatre in 2004 with McKellen himself as the dame, Widow Twankey, wearing a succession of costumes that varied between the massive and the minuscule, including nothing but a small Union Jack. Brilliantly written and designed and with a cast of outstanding actors who are better known for Shakespeare, it’s no wonder that the Old Vic panto has rapidly established itself as the intellectuals’ return to childhood pleasures.

Although performances of panto are occasionally shown on British television, there are no filmed versions available on DVD or even video outside of archival collections. In any case, since it is the only powerfully interactive form of mainstream theatre in Europe, you really have to be present. Panto speaks of nation and community, of family and tradition. But it also speaks of theatrical skills honed over long careers, of massive financial investment that often is recouped over many years, of different networks of celebrity, of the structure of the theatre industry, of the possibility of active spectatorship, and of much else besides. With hundreds of professional pantos being performed across the UK every Christmas season, with hundreds of thousands of playgoers watching panto every night during their runs (with as many as three shows at a theatre on Saturdays), and with box offices setting new records, panto shows few signs of vanishing. The 2007 Birmingham Hippodrome panto, for instance, took in over £2 million at the box office well before its run was over.

Pantomime depends on performance skills that have little to do with conventional acting. To perform a mirror scene or a “slosh scene,” in which decorating paste or food or foam covers everyone on stage and some of the audience too, necessitates long experience in order for the scene to appear to be entirely improvised. Contemporary television celebrities who think they can play panto—and straight actors also—learn that the requirements for panto success are far beyond them. The great pantomime dames like Jack Tripp or Berwick Kaler— stars known only for this work—or comics like Les Dawson and John Inman demonstrated complete understanding of audience response and comic timing that are particular to the form and magical to watch, providing a deep pleasure in seeing performance techniques at such a pitch of virtuosity. In all, the richness of panto as a field of study...