For the love of panto
PANTOMIME IS back – oh yes, it is! – just as preposterous as ever.
Its storylines might be clunking clichés, its jokes ancient and corny, and as for that cast of characters... A helpless female who can only be rescued by a handsome prince? Sisters who are blatantly body-shamed by being called ugly? Righteous heroes who always must triumph and evil villains (Boo! Hiss!) who always get their come-uppance?
Hardly in tune with our sensitive and sophisticated times, is it? Oh no, it isn’t!
And yet…audiences from across the generations pack theatres big and small throughout the land and busy showbiz names clear their diaries to take part.
Somehow, panto has survived!
It was mostly stopped in its merry tracks last year, when the curtains came down on more than 70 per cent of productions because of the pandemic, but once again it is sprinkling the kids with magic dust and bathing the adults in nostalgia and nonsense.
And thankfully so, because it’s such an essential Christmas thing.
A very British thing too. Proving how some comedy just doesn’t travel, panto was briefly tried on the Americans and it didn’t work – maybe they assumed that Widow Twankey must be for real, probably running for
