OH YES IT IS!
He’s behind you ... MARION McMULLEN lifts the curtain on some panto specials from Christmas past
WIDOW Twankey, Mother Goose, the Ugly Sisters and Captain Hook are all part of our great Christmas traditions. The panto season has been hit by the pandemic this year, but many online shows are still going ahead as well as socially distanced performances in some parts of the country.
Even the royal family enjoyed putting on a show and Queen Elizabeth would often star in a pantomime with her sister, Princess Margaret, when they were growing up. They staged pantos such as Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty and Old Mother Red Riding Boots in the 1940s.
The royal sisters were aged 15 and 11 when they appeared in their first panto, Cinderella, in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle.
The panto world is also full of superstition and it is supposed to be bad luck to rehearse a whole show before opening night. The final two lines of the panto are traditionally only performed for the first time before an audience.
The villains of the piece only enter from stage left and the good characters from the right. It has been said this is because the right signifies Heaven and the left Hell, but more practically it is likely to have become tradition because the baddies often make their entrance through a trapdoor on the left hand side of the stage.
British panto has its roots in the Italian street theatre of the Commedia dell’arte in the 16th century which featured characters such as Harlequin, Scaramouche and Pierrot. The shows began developing into the pantomimes we know today thanks to theatre manager and actor John Rich, who also founded Covent Garden Theatre. He played Harlequin himself from 1717 until his death in 1761.
The Victorian era saw pantomime become a Christmas treat, with most shows opening on Boxing Day.
Music hall stars began to appear as the Dame. Dan Leno starred in the Drury Lane panto for 15 years after first appearing in Babes In The Wood in 1888. The “patter” comedian was one of the biggest music hall stars of the day and Stan Laurel called him his hero.
Dan starred in panto opposite fellow musical hall great Marie Lloyd as principal girl.
British humorist Max Beerbohm said of him: “I defy anyone not to have loved Dan Leno at first sight. The moment he capered on, with that air of wild determination, squirming in every limb with some deep grievance that must be outpoured, all hearts were his.” Victorian pantomimes established the tradition of men playing women and women playing male roles and the cry of ‘He’s behind you’ was first called out by audiences more than 100 years ago.
Carry On and EastEnders star Barbara Windsor was just 20 when she appeared in the first panto ever to be staged in a nightclub, starring in Aladdin at Winston’s in London in 1957.
EastEnder Anita Dobson, who starred as Angie Watts in the BBC soap, carried on the panto tradition and appeared as Aladdin at Richmond Theatre in 1987.
She said: “If you’re a good actor, you should be able to do soap, comedy, Shakespeare, musicals, pantomime.”
Singer and TV icon Cilla Black is another woman to have stepped into Aladdin’s costume and first played him in a record-breaking production of the panto in 1970.
Millions normally go and see a panto at Christmas and favourites include Cinderella, Dick Whittington, Aladdin and Puss In Boots.
Actress Celia Imrie has said her first job was in pantomime: “I was a chorus girl in Dick Whittington at 16. I got the part by ringing the director daily to see if anyone had dropped out and it paid off eventually when I was cast as a rat.”
Popular entertainers, from Arthur Askey and Bruce Forsyth to Les
Dawson have all trodden the panto boards over the years.
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise took a break from appearing in Sleeping Beauty at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, in 1965 to pick up the Joint Showbiz Award from the Variety Club of Great Britain.
Des O’Connor shared the stage with Tanya the elephant when he played Buttons in the venue’s 1967 production of Cinderella.
Dusty Springfield led the audience in a singalong in Merry King Cole at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool in 1966 and Ronnie Corbett starred alongside his daughter Sophie in Mother Goose at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley in 1996. He has claimed he got the acting bug at 17 when he played the Dame in a local church youth club pantomime.
John Barrowman, who is appearing in Doctor Who on BBC 1 on New Year’s Day, is a panto veteran and says: “I’m really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre and, if that child has a great experience at a pantomime, they will continue to come year after year.”