JANE HOUSHAM
There’s nothing like a dame
I 32
Welcome to the section of Futures devoted to University of Hertfordshire Press, the University’s publisher. We publish books in a number of different subject areas, including Theatre history.
f you didn’t grow up in the UK, you may be wondering why December brought posters all over the country advertising such dubious delights as ‘David Van Day - the man we all love to hate!’ (he was
playing Abanazer, the baddy in Aladdin), Paul Daniels in Jack and the Beanstalk and ‘International Pop Sensation Jimmy Osmond’ as Buttons in Cinderella. All these ‘stars’ and many more come out of the woodwork to tread the boards for the panto season. Can any theatre in the land beat the winning combination of Pamela Anderson as the Genie of the Lamp and Les Dennis (of Family Fortunes fame) as the Widow Twankey in Liverpool’s Aladdin?
The British tradition of the Christmas pantomime really is special and has not been exported to many countries around the world, beyond a few outposts of the old
Empire. It’s barely known in the United States and Europe, but the blank faces it’s met with across the Channel are quite surprising as pantomime has its roots very firmly in European soil.
In sixteenth-century Italy, the Commedia dell’Arte developed as a form of popular theatre. The characters were always the same: the Lovers (Harlequin and Columbine), Columbine’s disapproving father (Pantaloon) and one or two conspiring servants or other interfering characters (including Pulchinello who later evolved into Mr Punch in seaside Punch and Judy shows). Groups of travelling players toured the Commedia from place to place, improvising a repertoire of stories and adapting them to local situations. Performances usually included singing and dancing as well as corny jokes and physical gags such as fights and chases. Local scandals and news stories
would be incorporated as well as cheeky comments about regional accents or character traits.
All these centuries-old elements survive in today’s pantos. Working their way through France, some of the troupes eventually made it to these shores
Main 1832: A harlequin is amongst the characters portrayed by King William IV (1765 - 1837), Lord Brougham, Lord Gray and Lord Eldon at a royal Christmas pantomime.
and by the eighteenth-century Britain had evolved its own comic pantomimes which included a boiled-down version of the Commedia, known as the Harlequinade. Becoming increasingly simplified, after a further hundred years the Harlequinade had become little more than a comic chase sequence full of slapstick and silliness which was usually performed as an ‘added extra’ at the end of the pantomime. In fact, the very word ‘slapstick’ comes from this theatrical form: during the complicated chase
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