Pantomime

• 1. Introduction

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  Pantomime is a theatrical form where the audience is not merely watching but is expected to shout, sing, and argue back at the stage. Developed in England in the 18th century, it blends fairy tales, cross-dressing, slapstick, and audience participation into a single rowdy evening. Informally called panto, it fills British theatres each Christmas and New Year season, drawing family crowds who already know the lines they are supposed to shout. How did a solo Roman dancer in a silk tunic give rise to a man dressed as a pantomime dame hurling jokes at children in the front row? And why does the villain always enter from the left side of the stage? The answers reach back two thousand years, pass through the streets of Italian commedia troupes, and arrive at a single performer named Joseph Grimaldi, who changed everything.

• 2. Roman Roots

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  The word itself comes from the Latin pantomimus, which in turn comes from the Greek word meaning a dancer who acted all the roles or all the story. Roman pantomime was a production for a solo male dancer, clad in a long silk tunic and a short mantle called a pallium. He wore masks, used stock poses, and communicated through a hand-language so complex it was commonly compared to an eloquent mouth. Music came from a flute and the pulse of an iron-shod shoe called a scabellum.

  These performances drew on Greek tragedy and Roman myth, telling tales such as those of the love of Venus and Mars and of Dido and Aeneas. The art ran from roughly the end of the first century BC until the end of the sixth century AD, spreading throughout the Roman Empire. Because its wordless nature crossed language barriers, it did more than any other art form to spread knowledge of Roman legends across the empire.

  Yet the art occupied a contradictory place. In Italy, its chief performers were celebrities, with followers who wore badges proclaiming their allegiance and engaged in street-fights with rival groups. At the same time, the art was as much despised as adored, and its practitioners were usually slaves or freedmen. After the classical world passed, Roman pantomime became a decisive influence on European concert dance, and through writers and ballet-masters such as Claude-Francois Menestrier (1631-1705), John Weaver (1673-1760), Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), and Gasparo Angiolini (1731-1803), it helped transform ballet into the dramatic ballet d'action.

• 3. Commedia and Harlequin

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  The commedia dell'arte was a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy in the Early Modern Period, featuring travelling companies who improvised comic stories for crowds across Italy and then France. Their stock characters included the innamorati, or young lovers; the vecchi, or old men, chief among them Pantalone; and the zanni, or servants, including Arlecchino, Colombina, Scaramouche, and Pierrot. As these troupes moved north and their characters entered English entertainment in the 17th century, the English harlequinade took shape around the eloping lovers Harlequin and Columbine, pursued by the girl's father Pantaloon and his comic servants Clown and Pierrot.

  By the 18th century, Harlequin had become the central figure and romantic lead in English versions, a role he kept for more than 150 years. His defining prop was a magic sword derived from the commedia slapstick or batte. Striking it against the scenery, he could make the whole stage transform around him, shifting from a castle interior to the streets of a town in an instant. Theatre historian David Mayer described how John Rich, acting at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre under the name Lun, gave his Harlequin the power to create stage magic in league with offstage craftsmen who operated trick scenery.

  Rich introduced Harlequin into London pantomimes in 1717 under the name Lun, which stood for lunatic. His 1724 production of The Necromancer; or, History of Dr. Faustus brought him great popularity. At the same time, John Weaver's Tavern Bilkers, staged at Drury Lane, is cited as the first pantomime produced on the English stage; it was not a success, and Weaver waited until 1716 to produce his next pantomimes, including The Loves of Mars and Venus.

• 4. Grimaldi's Clown

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  Joseph Grimaldi remade the harlequinade from the inside. Before him, Harlequin was the star; Grimaldi's Clown became a colourful agent of chaos, as important to the entertainment as Harlequin himself. One contemporary account praised his performances for their acute observation upon the foibles and absurdities of society and described him as the finest practical satyrist that ever existed, adding that he was so extravagantly natural, that the most saturnine looker-on acknowledged his sway.

  By the early 1800s, children went to the theatre around Christmas primarily to witness the craziness of the harlequinade chase scene, a fast-paced sequence involving spectacular scenic magic, slapstick comedy, dancing, and acrobatics. The plot followed Harlequin and Columbine escaping the clutches of Pantaloon and his servant Clown, with a bumbling policeman also in pursuit. After Grimaldi's era, Clown became the principal schemer, and Pantaloon was reduced to his assistant. From the time of Grimaldi, Clown would open the harlequinade by crying: Here We Are Again!

  Pantomime titles of this period reflect Harlequin's continued dominance even as Grimaldi's Clown rose. Productions carried dual titles in forms such as Harlequin and ________, or Harlequin ________; or, the ________. One example from this era runs: Harlequin Cock Robin and Jenny Wren; or, Fortunatus and the Water of Life, the Three Bears, the Three Gifts, the Three Wishes, and the Little Man who Woo'd the Little Maid.

• 5. The Harlequinade Fades

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  After 1843, Parliament lifted the restriction that had confined spoken drama to London's patent theatres, and the harlequinade's silent spectacle lost its hold. Writers James Planché and Henry James Byron elevated the fairy-tale portion of the pantomime by emphasising puns and humorous word play, a tradition that continues today. As manager of Drury Lane in the 1870s, Augustus Harris produced a series of popular pantomimes that pushed the balance further toward comic business in the opening sections and grand processionals.

  Well-known pantomime artists of that era included William Payne and his sons the Payne Brothers, Vesta Tilley, Dan Leno, Herbert Campbell, Little Tich, Clarice Mayne, Dorothy Ward, and Cullen and Carthy. By the end of the 19th century, the harlequinade had become a brief epilogue of dancing and acrobatics. It lingered for a few more decades before disappearing altogether. The last harlequinade was played at the Lyceum Theatre in 1939.

  Augustus Harris had already changed the guest-star tradition as well. As proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he began hiring well-known variety artists for his pantomimes, a practice that established the celebrity cameo as a fixture of the form. Critic Michael Billington later argued that if a star enters into the spirit of the entertainment they add to its overall effect, but if they merely stand outside the action as a showcase, their presence likely detracts despite any marketing advantage.

• 6. Conventions and Traditions

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  British pantomime carries a set of conventions so familiar to its audiences that they function almost as a ritual contract. The principal boy, the leading male juvenile character, is traditionally played by a young woman in breeches. The pantomime dame, often the hero's mother, is played by a man in drag. The good fairy enters from stage right, the villain from stage left; this convention traces directly to medieval mystery plays, where the right side of the stage symbolised Heaven and the left Hell.

  The audience participates on cue. Calls of He's behind you! and Oh, yes it is! and Oh, no it isn't! are expected responses to events on stage. The audience hisses the villain and groans sympathy at the rejected dame. At least one audience participation song is traditional, with halves of the auditorium challenged to sing their chorus louder than the other. Children may even be invited on stage to sing with cast members.

  Double entendre runs through nearly every performance, pitched above the heads of younger audience members for the entertainment of adults. A decorating or baking scene, called a slosh scene, typically involves characters throwing messy substances at one another. The pantomime animal, often a horse or cow, is played by two actors in a single costume. One occupies the front legs and head while the other takes the back. Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson, in his 2020 memoir, described contemporary pantomime as classic folklore and fairy tales loosely retold in a slapstick theatrical comedy-musical, comparing it to Mamma Mia! featuring the Three Stooges but with everyone's back catalogue, not just ABBA's.

• 7. Panto Around the World

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  Kitty Gurnos-Davies states in her doctoral dissertation that pantomime accounts for 20% of all live performances in the United Kingdom in any one year. The 2018-2019 season saw pantomime performances generating over £60m for the first time in recorded British history.

  Beyond the United Kingdom and Ireland, pantomime is performed in Switzerland, Australasia, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, Malta, Andorra, and the United Arab Emirates, among other places. In Jamaica, the National Pantomime was started in 1941 by educators Henry Fowler and Greta Fowler, pioneers of the Little Theatre Movement. Among the first players was Louise Bennett-Coverley. The annual pantomime opens on Boxing Day at the Little Theatre in Kingston and draws strongly on Jamaican culture, folklore, and history. In Malta, the genre arrived during the British colonial era and has remained strong even after independence, unlike in many other former territories where it declined as a symbol of colonial rule.

  In Canada, Ross Petty Productions has staged pantomimes at Toronto's Elgin Theatre each Christmas season since 1996. The White Rock Players Club in White Rock, British Columbia, has presented an annual pantomime since 1954. In the United States, the earliest recorded pantomime productions were Cinderella productions in New York in March 1808, with later productions in Philadelphia in 1824 and Baltimore in 1839. A production of Humpty Dumpty at the Olympic Theatre in New York ran for at least 943 performances between 1868 and 1873, becoming the longest-running pantomime in history.