DAYS OF CITY PANTO WARS
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DID you know the great British tradition of panto actually has its roots in Ancient Greece? Oh yes it does!
Fast forward to the turn of the 20th Century and the theatrical family treat was so popular that most of Liverpool’s theatre bosses were involved in a cut-throat competition to stage the most lavish panto in town.
Farcical entertainment at Christmastime really started with the Ancient Greeks, only for their idea to be stolen by invading Romans.
As the Romans conquered Europe, including Britain 2,000 years ago, they left the idea of pantomime behind them.
In late 12th century England, King Henry II’s fool was Roland le Pettour (Roland The Farter).
He performed in front of the court each Christmas Day, presenting a popular special routine called Saltum, Siffletum, et Pettum (a leap, a whistle, and a fart).
In the 14th Century, the writer William Langland wrote in his great poem, Piers Plowman, about minstrels farting in harmony with their pipes for the Christmas entertainment of their titled patrons and nobility.
However, the true founder of “modern” Pantomime, was John Rich. In 1746, he staged what he called ballet pantomimes – more commonly known as Harlequinades.
There were plays with music and comic songs, and with characters brought over to England, in the late 18th Century, by travelling players from Italy known as the Comedia Del Arte.
These included Pierrot the sad, slender clown, and Harlequin the mischief-maker. But the earliest known Pantomime in a form that we would recognise today was Jack the Giant Killer, performed in 1773 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, in London.
Liverpool’s earliest purpose-built theatre was named The Theatre Royal in its image, and the road on which it stood was even renamed Drury Lane, its name to this today.
By the end of the 1700s, first productions of Aladdin, Babes in the Wood, Mother Goose, and Cinderella began to appear, including in Liverpool theatres and music halls. Pantomimes always featured a clown, which had evolved from the medieval jester or buffoon, and included lots of slapstick.
The most famous and first-ever white-faced clown was Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) pictured above.
He became famous in Mother Goose in 1806, with a young Charles Dickens in the audience. Grimaldi was also the first clown to play female roles, and so began the tradition of the pantomime dame.
In Victorian times famous music hall stars began to appear in panto – always taking lead roles, a tradition carried on today. This was also the time when a leading actor started to play an exaggerated villain – Captain Hook, the wicked queen, and Abanazer among them.
This is the time too, when the role of the “principal boy” developed, usually being played by a famous female music hall star of the day.
Pantomimes were financially very lucrative for both theatre owners and performers.
As a result they were staged in most of Liverpool’s dozens of theatres.
By the end of the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries, theatre productions became more and more spectacular and lavish, and competition was vicious between managers to produce the most expensive production – especially at Liverpool’s Royal Court and Empire theatres, and at the Olympia, on West Derby Road, at one time the largest theatre in Britain.
And in 21st Century Britain, the tradition seems as popular as ever, with a trip to the panto on the Christmas list of most families with young children.