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Pantomime

For other uses, see Pantomime (disambiguation).
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Pantomime:The Christmas Pantomime colour lithograph bookcover, 1890
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The Christmas Pantomime colour lithograph bookcover, 1890
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In Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland pantomime (informally, panto) refers to a theatrical genre, usually performed around the Christmas and New Year holiday season.


Contents

Origin

The performance of Pantomime originates at its earliest in ancient Greece, but exploded in popularity during the reign of Augustus in ancient Rome. The style and content of modern panto has very clear and strong links with the Commedia dell'arte, a form of popular theatre that arose in Italy, in the early middle ages, and which reached England by the 16th century. The gender role reversal resembles the old festival of Twelfth Night, a combination of Epiphany and midwinter feast, when it was customary for the natural order of things to be reversed. This tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as Samhain and Saturnalia.


In Restoration England, a pantomime was considered a low form of opera, rather like the Commedia dell'arte but without Harlequin (rather like the French Vaudeville). In 1717, John Rich introduced Harlequin to the British stage under the name of "Lun" (for "lunatic") and began performing wildly popular pantomimes. These pantomimes gradually became more topical and comic, often involving as many special theatrical effects as possible. Colley Cibber and his colleagues competed with Rich and produced their own pantomimes, and pantomime was a substantial (if decried) subgenre in Augustan drama. This form had virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

Today

Traditionally performed at Christmas, with family audiences consisting mainly of children and parents, British pantomime is now a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, in-jokes, audience participation and mild sexual innuendo (but to the innocent everything is pure). Plots are often loosely based on traditional children's stories, the most popular titles being:

The form has a number of conventions.

Another contemporary panto tradition is the celebrity guest star, a practice that dates back to the late 19th century, when Augustus Harris, proprietor of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, hired well-known variety artistes for his pantomimes. Occasionally a pantomime pulls off a coup by engaging a guest star with an unquestionable thespian reputation, as with the Christmas 2004 production of Aladdin that featured Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey, which he reprised in the 2005 production at the Old Vic theatre in London. As well as being an actor in the Shakespearean tradition, McKellen had become hugely famous with children as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Magneto in X-Men. "At least we can tell our grandchildren that we saw McKellen's Twankey and it was huge," said Michael Billington, theatre critic of The Guardian, December 20, 2004, entering into the pantomime spirit. However in modern times, the value of these celebrities in provincial pantomime, either as actors or attractions, is sometimes questionable with erstwhile soap stars, comedians or sportsmen reviving a declining public career.

One of the most popular and critically acclaimed (not to mention commercially successful) pantomimes in recent years has been the one at the York Theatre Royal. It features no guest celebrities, but rather a regular cast headed by Berwick Kaler, who has played the dame there for 27 years and has built up a devoted fan-base. Kaler has been credited with reviving a dying tradition. Tickets go on sale April 1; in 2005 the first buyer turned up at 3am. Well before the opening they had sold 30,000 of the 50,000 seats, something that many celebrity-centred pantos could only dream of. He was interviewed by The Independent newspaper in 2004 for an article marking his 25th season:

"The panto," Kaler says, "has been said to be dying for years. Well, some of them deserve to die." These are the ones that flout tradition by casting a young man as principal boy, or by diminishing the role of the dame, sometimes writing her out altogether. Having cast clapped-out TV stars to draw the audiences, these pseudo-pantos "make no further effort. They just don't try. I dive into a tank of water every year. Who wants to do that?" [1]

In other non English countries though, Pantomime is equivalent to the English Mime resp. Mime Artist and is open to a wider range of topics and characters than English Pantomime. Famous European Mime Artists like Etienne Decroux, and Marcel Marceau or modern Pantomime Damir Dantes took the technical aspect of this ancient art to the highest levels of physical expression requiring long years of practice and enormous body control for this art of creating multi dimensional Illusions without any props on stage.

Pantomime in Australia

Pantomimes in Australia at Christmas have also always been very popular, and professional productions often feature celebrities. During the 1950s, a Christmas Cinderella pantomime in Sydney featured Danny Kaye as Buttons. There are also radio pantomimes at Christmas which are featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Pantomime in Canada

Pantomimes in Canada seem to be making a comeback.

The Millennium Players in Maple Ridge, British Columbia offer a yearly traditional Christmas pantomime in December at The ACT Theatre.

In fall 2006, Broadway Across Canada will be presenting the Ross Petty Production of Aladdin in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon and Ottawa starring Bret The Hitman Hart as the genie, from a Dora Mavor Moore Award-winning script written by David Finley.

The Kingston Meistersingers will present an original pantomime production of Cinderella, written by Richard Linley, at l'Octave Theatre in Kingston, Ontario, in late November 2006.

Peel Pantomime Players, Canada's oldest continually operating Panto group, celebrating it's 36th year in 2006, brings Norman Robbins "Rumpelstiltzkin" to the stage at the Lester B. Pearson Theatre in Brampton, Ontario, November 23, 24, 25, 26 and December 1, 2 and 3, 2006.

SMP Dramatic Society [2] in North Vancouver, BC presents a panto every January, as it has done for more than 10 years now. This go round it's going to be "Robin Hood and the Singing Nun" written by Stuart Ardern in mid-January, 2007. Oh no it's NOT! Oh, yes it IS!

Pantomime in the United States of America

Pantomime is less common in the United States and many people reckognize miming more commonly as a performance on the street to earn money in a hat, rather than a thatrical performance.

The Kennett Amateur Theatrical Society presents a pantomime every January [3].

The Shoestring Shakespeare Company, a troupe based in San Antonio, Texas, puts on a panto every year.

The Eastern Michigan University Theater Department began producing a Christmas Panto in 2005 with Pinocchio and then revived the tradition this year with a version on Treasure Island.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz has presented several pantomimes during its Winter season including Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea, Gretel and Hansel, and the 2006 world premiere of Sleeping Beauty by Kate Hawley, directed by SSC artistic director Paul Whitworth. [4]

In the United States, however, "pantomime" is more commonly understood to refer to the art of mime, as practised by mime artist, such as Marcel Marceau.

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Articles to be merged since September 2006 | Pantomime | Theatrical genres | Theatre in the United Kingdom | Comedy

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