The weird and wonderful history of pantomime
Ah, pantomime. One of the silliest, sparkliest British institutions. What’s that you say? Oh no it isn’t..? Oh yes it is.
But everyone can agree on one thing, at least: panto is best served with a hearty dollop of fun, and that certainly won’t go amiss in 2020. Despite fears that pantomimes might not make it to the stage this year, a handful of London theatres have come to the rescue, including the National Theatre, the Turbine. and, of course, the Palladium. The iconic venue holds a panto extravaganza every year, and Julian Clary, veteran of the artform and Palladium regular, is back for the ride.
“People come every year and look forward to it, so it’s great that it’s going to happen. And I want to do it as well. I need to get out the house, and I want to make people laugh,” he tells us. “I’m there dressed up, and there’s a Dame, and there’s a fairy, and there’s an evil character, and there’s Nigel Havers wandering around — so all your favourite bits are there. And good will triumph over evil, don’t you worry about that.”
Clary appeared in his first pantomime just over 20 years ago, and seems as fond of the world now as ever before. “I’ve had some very surreal experiences. I loved working with the late, great Keith Harris and Orville. Once we had a scene in bed, so I ended up in this bed with Orville the Duck. That was a strange situation,” he laughs.
“I also did a panto in Birmingham with Joan Collins once, which is not the sort of thing you expect to happen in your life. She was Queen Rat and I was The Spirit of the Bells, so I had this lovely bitching scene with a very iconic figure. I loved all that.”
But what Clary loves most about panto is, in his words, “being Christmas for other people.”
“I like the fact that I’m in this fantasy world that’s very colourful and glittery, while outside the Palladium it’s dark and slushy and cold,” he says. “I also like things that work on different levels, which panto does. So it’s got that traditional, good-will-triumph-over-evil-no-matter-what aspect, which is very morally satisfying and gives you all a warm glow. But my function is really to make disdainful remarks along the way. It’s a de-sweetener, I think.”
The audience gets a notable mention, too. “I always like to talk to the audience, and there’s all the shouting out and traditional stuff which really gets people going,” he says. “So we’re all kind of in it together.”
But where do these surreal panto traditions come from? The answer, according to Simon Sladen, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Performance at the V&A Museum, is 16th century Italy.
Known as commedia dell’arte, these performances involved a mixture of comedy, music, dance, improvisation and acrobatics. The form became so popular, says Sladen, that it spread across Europe to England. “Records show that a troupe even performed for Queen Elizabeth I in 1602,” he says.
But panto as we know it wasn’t truly crystallised until the Victorian era. In around 1879, Augustus Harris became the manager of Thetare Royal Drury Lane and introduced musical hall stars to the stage. “Spectacle is key,” Sladen says. “The Victorians went all-out on technology and staging. These pantomimes reportedly had casts of 600, and some transformation sequences required 50 stage hands.”
Understandably then, opening nights could run for up to six hours due to technical difficulties or blatant lack of rehearsal, and in an age when many Londoners hadn’t even set eyes on a sheep, live animals such as elephants were a common sight on stage. Panto horses are part of the comedy these days, but when pantomime first emerged, the goal was to be as detailed – and as spectacular – as possible.
“One of Harris’s pantos at Drury Lane cost £65,000 to run, which is the equivalent of almost £6 million in 2020,” Sladen says. The notoriously prudish artist and critic John Ruskin reportedly hated it, "as it had women dressed as thieves smoking cigars.”
These elaborate stagings also set the scene for the “oh no it isn’t” trope. Two performers would pretend that one was precariously balanced on the other’s finger without the aid of a wire. When the audience protested that there was in fact a wire - “oh yes there is” - the actor at the bottom of the human tower would walk up to the audience and respond “oh no there isn’t,” leaving his partner flailing in the air and duly revealing the gag.
The figure of the Clown — not one we recognise as such today, but elements of which appear in the Dame, or any comic relief — emerged a little earlier, with Joseph Grimaldi (who lends his name to Joey the Clown in Punch and Judy). “His talent in what was then a secondary role had audiences calling for more, so much so that narratives were realigned to revolve around the clown,” says Sladen.
Grimaldi’s father was also involved in the origins of the “it’s behind you” tradition - although the tale is more tragedy than comedy. He was particularly superstitious, and became convinced that the devil would come to kill him on the first Friday of the month. He began locking himself away, but locals soon caught wind of this ritual, and would creep up to his room jeering “he’s behind you" at the horrified old man.
The pantomime Dame emerged partly as a result of women being banned from the stage in early productions, but became a fully rounded character thanks to Dan Leno, who first appeared in an 1886 production of Jack and the Beanstalk.
Such fairy tales were a key staple of Victorian panto, Sladen explains. But they weren’t the stories we often see today: “Disney have been a huge influence. Before 1980 we have very few Snow Whites, and before 1990 we virtually have no Peter Pans. Prior to that we saw more of Little Bo Peep, the Queen of Hearts, Humpty Dumpty, and other figures from nursery rhymes.”
They may be a festive tradition now, but pantos haven’t always been linked to Christmas. Again, says Sladen, we have the Victorians to thank for that. “Pantomimes often began on Boxing Day. The Victorians invented Christmas, so this is part of that package.
“It’s always been like a living newspaper of the year. So there are jokes about the politics, jokes about the trends - that’s always been part of it. It’s that sense of nowness that’s important.”
And if the prospect of reliving 2020 doesn’t sound especially appealing? Well, at least it’s behind you.
Pantoland is at the London Palladium from December 12 to January 3, palladiumpantomime.com
