December 2008

OH YES IT IS! A History of Pantomime

Pantomime is ‘a cornucopia of comic calamities cultural curiosity and codswallop’ – Oh no it isn’t! – Oh yes it is! said Jane Tapley who spoke so amusingly and knowledgeably about the history of the Panto to the Farnham Decorative and Fine Arts Society at the Maltings on Tuesday 16th December.  She should know.  Jane is the Special Events Organiser at the Theatre Royal Bath, a theatrical landlady, and a confirmed pantophile.

Pantomime is a particularly British institution that has succeeded for over 200 years on the back of our singular sense of humour.  Panto works on many levels with children always to the fore but with parents and grandparents laughing gleefully, if guiltily, alongside. The age old stories of good versus evil with good the eternal winner played out with principal boys (always girls) principal girls (ditto), Dames, Harlequins ‘Skin’ parts such as the two men playing the poor sad sold cow in Jack and the Beanstalk somehow combine to provide part of the magic that is childhood.  Dames are always men dressed as substantial women and it is always known by the audience this is the case. The word ‘drag’ is from this character and refers to the wearing of a dress that, literally, drags along the floor.  Principal boys were the one chance, in the days when it was improper to display even an elegant ankle, for gentlemen to see a beautiful pair of ladies’ legs more or less in their entirety!   In part this explains the magic of the Panto – belief is not quite suspended but you pretend that it is.  Queen Victoria loved the Panto taking her family every Boxing Day.  She was reported to have been amused.

Panto can trace its origins back to Roman and Greek theatre when parts were mimed and masked, moving later to scripts and played at great theatres.  David Garrick, the actor/manager at Drury Lane loved the Panto and wrote dialogue for it.   John Rich the ‘Father of the Panto’ played at Covent Garden in ‘Harlequin and Puss in Boots’ – not yet Dick Whittington.  Dickens was a huge fan – he loved children and many of his main characters were children.  The greatest of clowns, Grimaldi, played at Drury Lane and gave us the word slapstick by banging two sticks together for effect.  Always adjusting and moving on with the times by, for example, using the stars and celebrities of the day to add colour and presence even if, like Ian Botham, they can’t sing, dance or act!  Pantomime continues to entrance.

Chairman Peter Duffy reminded members of the next lecture ‘Charles Darwin – the artwork and the voyage of HMS Beagle’ on 20th January 09; the visit to Tyntesfield on May 26th and the Study day on 27th February ‘The Gilded Stage – A social and cultural history of opera’.

Photo by Graham Parlett.