Pantomime
Every winter, Britain packs into theatres to boom 'He's behind you!' at a ghost, a man in an enormous frock and a girl in tights. It all began with a Georgian clown.
Published
Quick Facts
- Name from
- The Roman pantomimus, a performer who told stories in dance and gesture
- British form takes shape
- Early 1700s, with John Rich's harlequin shows in London
- Superstar of the early days
- Joseph Grimaldi, whose Mother Goose (1806) was a huge hit
- Victorian blockbuster era
- Augustus Harris's lavish annual shows at Drury Lane from 1879
- Stock characters
- The Dame, the Principal Boy, the villain, the good fairy and a comic animal
- Favourite stories
- Cinderella, Aladdin, Dick Whittington, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White
- Classic catchphrases
- 'He's behind you!' and 'Oh no it isn't!' / 'Oh yes it is!'
- Traditional season
- Opening around Christmas, with Boxing Day as a long-standing favourite
The silent Romans who gave pantomime its name
The word comes from the Roman pantomimus, a star performer who acted out entire stories through dance and gesture while a chorus sang. Britain's version could hardly be less silent. The modern form grew in Georgian London. At Lincoln's Inn Fields in the early 1700s, the theatre manager John Rich performed as Harlequin under the stage name Lun. His shows borrowed from Italian commedia dell'arte and mixed myth with slapstick, trapdoors and magical transformations. By the 1800s the formula had a fixed shape: a short opening story, then a chaotic chase called the harlequinade, where lovers, a leering Pantaloon and a mischievous clown ran riot.
The clown who made Boxing Day famous
Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was the first great pantomime star. At Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden he reinvented the clown as a greedy, cheeky figure with a whitened face and bold red cheeks. Audiences loved him so much that clowns became known as 'Joey'. His hit Harlequin Mother Goose, which opened at Covent Garden in 1806, made the title role and the story a pantomime fixture for ever more. Grimaldi's name lives on in the Clowns' Service, held each February at All Saints Church in Haggerston, east London, where entertainers turn up in full costume. It moved there after Holy Trinity, Dalston, closed in 2014.
Why the Dame is a man and the hero is a woman
The Victorians flipped gender on its head. The Dame, usually the hero's mum, is played by a man in outrageous frocks. Aladdin's laundry-owning mother, Widow Twankey, is named after a type of green tea. Dick Whittington has Sarah the Cook, and Jack's mum in Jack and the Beanstalk is Dame Trott. Meanwhile, the Principal Boy, the young male hero, is traditionally played by a young woman, who strides about with a confident thigh-slap. That tradition took off in the 1800s, when showing a woman's legs on stage was a big draw. Dan Leno, the music-hall giant who played Dame at Drury Lane in the 1890s and early 1900s, helped make the character a national favourite. The pantomime was soon being built around its Dame.
Shouting at the stage: the unwritten rules
Pantomime is the one night out where heckling is the whole point. The audience boos the villain, cheers the hero and warns him about the ghost sneaking up behind. The result is 'He's behind you!', 'Oh no it isn't!' and 'Oh yes it is!'. There are conventions you can spot in most shows. The good fairy enters from the right side of the stage and the villain from the left. A Demon King may rise through a trapdoor in a puff of smoke. There is a slosh scene, with custard pies or buckets of water. There is a song-sheet sing-along, where one half of the house is pitted against the other. And there is a pantomime cow or horse, usually two performers in one costume. Topical jokes are routine, so the same script can be quite different from one theatre to the next.
Spectacle, stars and local rivalries
In the 1870s and 1880s, Augustus Harris turned Drury Lane's Christmas show into a huge event, with marching armies of performers and staggering scenery. The harlequinade faded away in the early twentieth century, and the fairy-tale story took over. Today every region puts its own stamp on the show. London houses such as the London Palladium and Hackney Empire go big on celebrity casts and sharp gags. In Glasgow, panto has a long tradition of Scots-flavoured comedy and local references. Belfast's Grand Opera House is known for its enormous annual run, packed with in-jokes for a Northern Irish audience. Amateur dramatic groups and village halls stage their own versions across the UK, often with the vicar playing the villain. For many British children, a pantomime is their first trip to the theatre.
Notable people
- John Rich
- Joseph Grimaldi
- Dan Leno
- Augustus Harris
- Madame Vestris
Keep exploring
Boxing Day
Published
In 1963, ten top-flight football matches on Boxing Day produced 66 goals, and the day's odd name goes back to servants, church poor boxes and a feast for a saint.
St David's Day
Published
Wales's patron saint lived on bread, herbs and water, and his national day has two emblems, the leek and the daffodil, because of a happy linguistic muddle.