Do we still love the great British panto?
Cancelling this year’s season would undeniably cost actors and theatres dear, but any cultural loss is more debatable
How do I love panto? Let me count the ways. I love panto because it’s a British phenomenon. Originally rooted in the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte and the French fairground entertainments that came over to England at the time of the Restoration, it has evolved over the centuries into a form of theatre you won’t find anywhere else in the world – other than parts of the old empire. They still do panto in South Africa and Jamaica, in Canada and Australia, but essentially panto is our nation’s only unique contribution to world culture.
And it’s popular; astonishingly so. Come Christmas, millions of people, old and young, flock to theatres up and down the land to watch a romantically farcical fairy-tale set to music, peopled with men dressed as women, women dressed as men and humans dressed as animals. There is spectacle and slapstick, topical jokes and old chestnuts (not to mention a guaranteed profit for the venue, which, this year, could mean the difference between life and death for many theatres).
I also love panto because for many children it’s their introduction to the magical world of theatre. I can remember my first panto: Cinderella at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, in 1954. I was six and fell totally in love with Cinders and couldn’t begin to understand why she ended up with Prince Charming. He seemed completely wet to me. The character I loved most was Buttons – a character invented by an Englishman, incidentally. (H J Byron, cousin to the famous poet, wrote pantomimes in the 1860s and invented Buttons as Cinderella’s friend and Widow Twankey as Aladdin’s mum.)
I take my grandchildren to panto now and have done every year since they were old enough to go. I have seven grandchildren, aged between four and 16, and to watch them laughing at the slapstick, hissing the villain, squirming at the gooey bits and singing along to the song sheet is for me one of the great joys of family life. I’m even amused to see them fighting over the overpriced ice creams in the interval.
I like my pantomime to be by turns silly and sentimental. I don’t like it with smutty gags and innuendo. When I last appeared professionally in panto (as Baron Hardup, with Bonnie Langford as an enchanting Cinders) we had our cheeky moments (Barbara Windsor was the Fairy Godmother, after all), but I recall our producer reminding us that this was family entertainment and for many of the children in the audience their first ever visit to the theatre, and that we had a responsibility to make them welcome and at home.
“It’s a party,’ he said, “where no one should feel awkward or ill-at-ease.” Panto isn’t Brecht: you want your audience to go home happy, not alienated.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Joseph Grimaldi (the original Clown Joey) was Britain’s first and biggest-ever pantomime star. He suffered from depression and went to see a doctor who, not knowing who he was, told him to lift his spirits by going to see “the great Grimaldi” in pantomime. “But I am the great Grimaldi!” wailed the clown.
Pantomime is there to lift your spirits, whoever you are, whatever your age. It is the best kind of communal experience. You get elements of that experience in church or at a football match, but panto is the one form of family entertainment where people of all ages laugh and cheer and sing together. It’s exactly what our nation needs now.