Our First Panto

We went to our first pantomime Monday night. What a hoot! For those unfamiliar with this art form, as we were until we moved to England, Pantomimes are farcical musicals staged live every year around the Christmas and New Year's holidays. A good panto, as they are fondly referred to, always stars a man in the role of a grand dame and a woman in the role of a man or boy. The costumes are outrageous -- especially those of the grand dame. There are a stock number of panto plays, usually based on fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington (you have to be British to recognize that fairy tale), Cinderella...but the jokes are new each year. The jokes are one-liners, many of them puns with two levels of meaning, one level for the kiddies and another level for the adults. Many of the jokes poke fun at contemporary celebrities or local oddities. There is also a fair amount of audience participation. The audience is encouraged to yell out stock phrases upon certain cues from the actors. The villain must always be booed and hissed at. At one point a monster will be lurking in the background and the audience shouts out "Watch out behind you!!!!" For each performance one audience member, "the victim", is singled out for heckling by the actors on stage. At another point the actors come off stage for a chase scene through the audience. Great fun for kids, but us kids-at-heart had a good time too.

We had heard that Harrogate Theatre does a pretty good job each year with their panto and they certainly lived up to their reputation this year with their production of Aladdin. We were so impressed with the costumes and the sets. They were lush, fanciful and inventive. At one point Aladdin takes a ride on a magic carpet -- the stage went dark except for Aladdin floating on his carpet passing objects lit up by ultraviolet light: Saturn, the man in the moon, the Starship Enterprise... The grand dame's costumes and makeup were absolutely hilarious. Impossible to describe but at one point, he, I mean, she came out in a brilliant red dress that looked like a five-tiered pagoda. The woman playing Aladdin made no attempt whatsoever to look like a boy: she was busty with impossibly long legs and traipsed about all night on four-inch heels. The jokes flew fast and furious and I'm sure a few of them went over our heads due to local accents and idioms.

I gather that in England, either you love panto or you hate it. Some people find it just too goofy to bother with. Others, I guess the type that love Benny Hill-type humor, are mad about panto. I left the theatre that night hoarse from shouting and, though I've never been a Benny Hill fan, I like panto alright.