A bold reimagining of the classic Beefeater uniform! I designed, patterned, and sewed this glamorous Yeoman Warder costume from scratch, crinoline, halberd, and all. Turning tradition into a camp costume was such a joy! All for my dissertation piece on the evolution of the pantomime dame. 🇬🇧
I’ve been tagged on a lengthy (50 questions!) ask-meme aimed at writers, so I’m giving it my best shot even if some of the answers are a bit terse because of Obvious. (Some other answers are considerably longer, because of Me.)
It’ll go in the queue for later, but just a while ago @dduane heard me grumbling about one question - “pet writing-peeves” - because I’ve a got new one based on my current bedtime reading, a stack of 1970s sword & sorcery short-story anthologies.
Where else, I wonder, do you see the word “thews” used so much when “muscles” is perfectly adequate, and what’s with heroes always having a “mane” of hair?
But the main peeve from that source is about the use of “Ho!” in dialogue (not in the modern sense..) There’s one story, about 15 pages long, in which “Ho!” opens a speech six times.
“Ho, villain…”; “Ho, rogue…”; “Ho, scoundrel…”; “Ho, rascal…”; “Ho, pig…”; “Ho, jailer…” It even rises to seven if you include “Ho there, wizard…”
Ho, ho, ho.
At which D pointed out, “You sound like Santa, or panto,” and I see her point: that’s the way Principal Boys in Christmas pantomime used to sound while they were still played by girls. They would strut and swagger about the stage in their abbreviated jackets and high-heeled boots with their voices a lot lower than their hemlines, slapping their expanse of exposed thigh (I don’t know why, it’s a thing they did) and being as masculine as a 36D bust allowed.
The only woman in this shot is playing a man...
Now that Principal Boys are usually played by boys, it’s just not the same.
Tumblr is very American, so a word about British (and Irish) Christmas theatrical entertainment is in order. First thing to establish is that “panto” is the important syllable. “Mime” suggests silence, and that’s something panto definitely lacks.
Take one of about a dozen plots based on fairy tales or nursery rhymes – Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk, Babes in the Wood, Mother Goose...
Add popular songs with lyrics revised for local or current events, and a lot of audience participation. At some stage it’s traditional for a curtain emblazoned with the words of some simple, silly or tongue-twisting song to be hung across the stage while the right and left sides of the auditorium compete with each other to sing it loudest (or if properly tongue-twisting, most coherently). This sort of contest always finishes with a declared draw, so everything works out right in the end.
Add a lot of slapstick comedy, often including some kind of animal – usually a Pantomime Horse or Pantomime Cow – performed by two people in a costume, where the head-end and the arse-end are in constant disagreement, though everything works out right in the end.
Even if you’re not sure which end.
Add a Pantomime Dame, who is a snarky, innuendo-laden old woman, often the mother, aunt or guardian of the hero or heroine but always played by a man of mature years in a dubious-looking dress, an even more dubious wig and a thoroughly disreputable enormous false bosom. Speaking in a Northern English or “Blackpool landlady” accent happens a lot. This is automatically funny.
The Dame’s patter is usually laden with double-entendres which entertain parents while the kids are being entertained by the silly doings of that funny man in a dress. Such funny men include Sir Ian McKellan, whose Dame, Widow Twankey in “Aladdin”, often all but dropped the double part of the entendre yet sailed right over innocent little heads.
As one review appropriately put it: “We have seen McKellan’s Twankey, and it is huge...”
In “Cinderella” the presence of Dames is tripled by the inclusion of The Ugly Sisters, which means there is a Principal Dame and two Subsidiary Dames. Though sometimes played by drag queens like Danny La Rue...
...a Traditional Pantomime Dame should never look that well-dressed. Rather than a perfectly made-up and costumed female impersonator a Dame should be, and look like, an obvious and distinctly homely “bloke in a frock” such as Les Dawson.
But don’t worry, glam or glum, everything works out right in the end.
Add a Principal Boy, who is played by a leggy woman in a Sexy Halloween Version of the appropriate male costume – when a Principal Boy wears a “bum-freezer” jacket, she doesn’t mess about with half measures.
The Principal Boy’s principal function - apart from striding about, slapping their thighs (once again, I’ve never understood that bit) and standing legs akimbo with fists on hips in a manly posture that fools nobody - is to brighten the day of fathers who’ve been dragged to the panto by their kids. If the jackets are short enough and the legs are long enough, everything works out right in the end.
This is panto’s notion of the bold hero and later Lord Mayor (but not Lady Mayoress) of London, “Dick Whittington”.
Add the Principal Boy’s romantic interest, the Principal Girl, actually played for a change by a girl (though I’ve heard of at least one Cinderfella) who is Very Put-Upon but Very Sweet.
She often has a comedy companion in the form of a witty or clumsy fellow servant, frequently called Buttons, or a goose...
...or cat...
...played by someone in the appropriate costume.
Dick Whittington’s cat is traditionally male and called Tommy, but with panto being what it is, a tom-cat being played by a woman shouldn’t surprise anyone by now (and if you still believe the Dame wouldn’t dare get some innuendo mileage from Dick and Pussy, you haven’t been paying attention.) The help provided by these companions often causes mayhem, but everything works out right in the end.
Add the Pantomime Villain, who can be anything from a Demon King...
…to a Rat King...
...to Captain Hook…
...but who nowadays can also be a Wicked Queen...
...and often a sexy one for those fathers in the audience again.
Pantomime villains rant, roar and stamp (or purr and sashay as appropriate), chewing the scenery as if it was prime rib and they hadn’t eaten all day. “Subtle” and “understated” is not in their performance vocabulary.
Every villain appearance, usually accompanied by dry-ice smoke and a sickly green or blue spotlight so the audience is SURE, must be greeted with boos and hisses. This response is usually loudest from the youngest, but 80-year-old grannies can get into it as well.
In addition, whenever a plot device, missing character or some potential unpleasantness appears from the wings while another character is talking...
...the audience must yell: “It’s behind you!”
This is when the on-stage character looks round just as the Whatever is concealed by some totally inadequate cover, then responds with “Oh not it isn’t!”, and the subsequent witty exchange of audience-actor repartee – “Oh yes it is!” / “Oh no it isn’t!” - continues to almost, but not quite, the point when the most over-excited members of the audience are ready to storm the stage.
That’s when the character turns around just an instant after the Whatever has finally left the stage and smugly announces “Oh-No-It-ISN’T!” They then ad-lib their way through the inevitable heckling about their intelligence, eyesight, hearing etc.
Once the villain gets an appropriate come-uppance and virtue is triumphant, true love conquers all...
...and after a finale that’s often far more impressive than anything before it...
...everything really does work out right in the end.
For foreigners, especially Americans with their sensitivity to protecting children from any form of perceived smut, a British/Irish Christmas panto has to be seen to be believed, and sometimes not even then. The level of cross-dressing and sexual innuendo delivered in a performance ostensibly for under-tens has left many jaws hanging open, and romantic encounters between the Principal Boy and the Principal Girl can lead to uneasy stirrings in the stalls.
The appearance of non-traditional characters such as Churchill – not the famous politician, but a nodding-head dog who shills motor insurance – or a meerkat who was never near “The Lion King” but who also shills insurance (in a Russian accent) will only increase the confusion.
Take a classic Walt Disney cartoon, mix with “Monty Python” at its pepperpot-lady best, stir in a late-night showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and serve well-warmed and dusted with glitter to an audience of sugar-buzzed children.
That’s panto.
And no matter how chaotic the plot, it’ll always work out right in the end.
