Oh no I don’t!
Oh no you don’t! Don’t what? You don’t like panto! Cue raucous laughter, even though no one’s said anything remotely hilarious. I can’t believe anyone really, truly, deep down inside, enjoys the mirth-free hell that are pantomimes. They’re just pretending because social conditioning means it’s a crime against British culture – right up there with saying you can’t stand Alan Bennett – to dislike the lame re-hash of stale jokes and fading soap stars that’s the Christmas family show. Not that I’ve ever understood why a “family panto” would be filled with the kind of creepy innuendo that died with Benny Hill and handsy uncles. Nor do I comprehend the once-yearly passion for cross-dressing. Girls in tights make terrible male leads now no one’s excited by a shapely calf in fishnets. Meanwhile, pantomime dames are a parody of campness, like a night at Madame Jojo’s without the wit, or genuine outrageousness. I suspect it’s different if you have Lily Savage in the role, but there’s only one of her to go around.
My mother always took me and my siblings to see some kind of Christmas theatre, from The Wombles Show and Dancing on Ice to, in later
childhood, Peter Pan and The Pirates of Penzance.
Only once did she attempt a traditional panto: Dick Whittington at the London Palladium in 1980, with Jim Davidson, Mollie Sugden, Windsor Davies, Melvyn Hayes, Clive Dunn and Lionel
Blair – making it quite possibly the most pantomimey panto in the entire history of show business. There was even a moment when Eamonn Andrews stormed on stage to sweep Melvyn Hayes off to do This is Your Life – for real, not for effect. Aged 12, I hated every last second.
But most of all I loathed – and still loathe – the obligation to be a good little audience participant. All that enforced yelling of “He’s behind you!” makes me want to run amok with a pitchfork. Clever, interactive modern theatre sucks the audience in by the force of its own ingenuity. My sons and I were enchanted by the realer-than-real make believe of Tom Morris’s Swallows and Amazons, which sent boats into the audience. But with panto you’re required to do all the work, like an unpaid extra: you must laugh when told and shout lines that offer no joy beyond the comfort of the stultifyingly familiar. Panto is a concept where mediocrity isn’t just accepted, it’s de rigueur. The concept embraces bad jokes and second-rate scripts, not to mention ropy dancing and singing. It’s like karaoke night down the pub with West End prices. It’s the theatrical equivalent of the awful TV comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys.
I understand why actors love panto season and feel the show must go on. It’s the one time of the year when almost all of them are employed, for starters. The masses may ignore the lure of Chekhov, but come December you’ll get bums on seats for no better reason than ingrained habit. It always looks more fun for the performers than the audience. Time to let your hair down and put a silly costume on. My best friend from university is an actress and had a blast in rep playing the back end of a panto cow. It’s de-stress hour for a high-stress business.
In essence, pantomime is the last gasp of vaudeville – an old jokes home for the lost arts of hoofing, warbling, sniggering and using sexual stereotypes so broad you could drive a tank across them.
I’m happy if it’s part of your family’s sacred Christmas traditions. Just don’t expect me to be “Behind you!”