Do we still love the great British panto?

Oh yes we do!

by Gyles Brandreth

How do I love panto? Let me count the ways. I love panto because it’s a British phenomenon. Originally rooted in the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte and the French fairground entertainments that came over to England at the time of the Restoration, it has evolved over the centuries into a form of theatre you won’t find anywhere else in the world – other than parts of the old empire. They still do panto in South Africa and Jamaica, in Canada and Australia, but essentially panto is our nation’s only unique contribution to world culture.

And it’s popular; astonishingly so. Come Christmas, millions of people, old and young, flock to theatres up and down the land to watch a romantically farcical fairy-tale set to music, peopled with men dressed as women, women dressed as men and humans dressed as animals. There is spectacle and slapstick, topical jokes and old chestnuts (not to mention a guaranteed profit for the venue, which, this year, could mean the difference between life and death for many theatres).

I also love panto because for many children it’s their introduction to the magical world of theatre. I can remember my first panto: Cinderella at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, in 1954. I was six and fell totally in love with Cinders and couldn’t begin to understand why she ended up with Prince Charming. He seemed completely wet to me. The character I loved most was Buttons – a character invented by an Englishman, incidentally. (H J Byron, cousin to the famous poet, wrote pantomimes in the 1860s and invented Buttons as Cinderella’s friend and Widow Twankey as Aladdin’s mum.)

I take my grandchildren to panto now and have done every year since they were old enough to go. I have seven grandchildren, aged between four and 16, and to watch them laughing at the slapstick, hissing the villain, squirming at the gooey bits and singing along to the song sheet is for me one of the great joys of family life. I’m even amused to see them fighting over the overpriced ice creams in the interval.

I like my pantomime to be by turns silly and sentimental. I don’t like it with smutty gags and innuendo. When I last appeared professionally in panto (as Baron Hardup, with Bonnie Langford as an enchanting Cinders) we had our cheeky moments (Barbara Windsor was the Fairy Godmother, after all), but I recall our producer reminding us that this was family entertainment and for many of the children in the audience their first ever visit to the theatre, and that we had a responsibility to make them welcome and at home.

“It’s a party,’ he said, “where no one should feel awkward or ill-at-ease.” Panto isn’t Brecht: you want your audience to go home happy, not alienated.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Joseph Grimaldi (the original Clown Joey) was Britain’s first and biggest-ever pantomime star. He suffered from depression and went to see a doctor who, not knowing who he was, told him to lift his spirits by going to see “the great Grimaldi” in pantomime. “But I am the great Grimaldi!” wailed the clown.

Pantomime is there to lift your spirits, whoever you are, whatever your age. It is the best kind of communal experience. You get elements of that experience in church or at a football match, but panto is the one form of family entertainment where people of all ages laugh and cheer and sing together. It’s exactly what our nation needs now.

Oh no we don't!

by Rowan Pelling

Oh no you don’t! Don’t what? You don’t like panto! Cue raucous laughter, even though no one’s said anything remotely hilarious. I can’t believe anyone really, truly, deep down inside, enjoys the mirth-free hell that are pantomimes. They’re just pretending because social conditioning means it’s a crime against British culture – right up there with saying you can’t stand Alan Bennett – to dislike the lame re-hash of stale jokes and fading soap stars that’s the Christmas family show.

Not that I’ve ever understood why a “family panto” would be filled with the kind of creepy innuendo that died with Benny Hill and handsy uncles. Nor do I comprehend the once-yearly passion for cross-dressing. Girls in tights make terrible male leads now no one’s excited by a shapely calf in fishnets. Meanwhile, pantomime dames are a parody of campness, like a night at Madame Jojo’s without the wit, or genuine outrageousness. I suspect it’s different if you have Lily Savage in the role, but there’s only one of her to go around.

My mother always took me and my siblings to see some kind of Christmas theatre, from The Wombles Show and Dancing on Ice to, in later childhood, Peter Pan and The Pirates of Penzance. Only once did she attempt a traditional panto: Dick Whittington at the London Palladium in 1980, with Jim Davidson, Mollie Sugden, Windsor Davies, Melvyn Hayes, Clive Dunn and Lionel Blair – making it quite possibly the most pantomimey panto in the entire history of show business. There was even a moment when Eamonn Andrews stormed on stage to sweep Melvyn Hayes off to do This is Your Life – for real, not for effect. Aged 12,

I hated every last second.

But most of all I loathed – and still loathe – the obligation to be a good little audience participant. All that enforced yelling of “He’s behind you!” makes me want to run amok with a pitchfork. Clever, interactive modern theatre sucks the audience in by the force of its own ingenuity. My sons and I were enchanted by the realer-than-real make believe of Tom Morris’s Swallows and Amazons, which sent boats into the audience.

But with panto you’re required to do all the work, like an unpaid extra: you must laugh when told and shout lines that offer no joy beyond the comfort of the stultifyingly familiar. Panto is a concept where mediocrity isn’t just accepted, it’s de rigueur. The concept embraces bad jokes and second-rate scripts, not to mention ropy dancing and singing. It’s like karaoke night down the pub with West End prices. It’s the theatrical equivalent of the awful TV comedy Mrs Brown’s Boys.

I understand why actors love panto season and feel the show must go on. It’s the one time of the year when almost all of them are employed, for starters. The masses may ignore the lure of Chekhov, but come December you’ll get bums on seats for no better reason than ingrained habit. It always looks more fun for the performers than the audience. Time to let your hair down and put a silly costume on. My best friend from university is an actress and had a blast in rep playing the back end of a panto cow. It’s de-stress hour for a high-stress business.

In essence, pantomime is the last gasp of vaudeville – an old jokes home for the lost arts of hoofing, warbling, sniggering and using sexual stereotypes so broad you could drive a tank across them.

I’m happy if it’s part of your family’s sacred Christmas traditions. Just don’t expect me to be “Behind you!”