by Peter Barker
LONDON, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Christmas and the New Year in Britain always bring with them the pantomime season, a type of theater only found in a few English-speaking countries.
Pantomimes are theater performances which are supposedly aimed at children but are also good fun for adults. They are in no way intellectual, nor do they carry any message and their plots are largely irrelevant.
Their real purpose is an excuse for audience and actors to have lots of light-hearted fun, often with the kind of behavior that would not be allowed in the theater under normal circumstances.
Panto scripts are merely vehicles to get the action from the beginning of the performance to the end, and their themes are often very similar.
Common panto themes include adapted children's fairytales like Cinderella, in which a beautiful but badly treated youngest daughter is granted her wish of going to the ball despite the best efforts of her ugly sisters, who are the baddies. At the ball the girl meets a beautiful prince. They fall in love and live happily ever after.
Other panto themes include English folk stories, such as Dick Whittington and his cat who are poor travelers until Dick enjoys some success and eventually becomes mayor of London.
Pantos are considered a low form of theater, but they are also thought to be great fun and most British adults have fond childhood memories of attending pantos. The tradition is maintained by parents taking their children to see panto, and there is often a good deal of innuendo and many double entendres in the script which the adults find highly amusing.
The potency of pantos can be seen in their proliferation and the stars they attract. This year in London there are no less than four productions of Cinderella on at the same time as well as two Dick Whittingtons. And 1980s American star Pamela Anderson is performing in panto in the capital, while legendary 89-year-old Hollywood star Mickey Rooney is in a panto in the Midlands.
Sir Ian McKellen, known in the theater as a great Shakespearian actor and known worldwide as Gandalf in the film Lord of the Rings, recently appeared in panto for two successive years at the Old VicTheatre. He was given his long-held ambition to appear in panto by American film star and Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, who manages the theater.
Pantomime has deep roots that reach right back to ancient Greece, but in its present form it is a theatrical form that is unique to the English-speaking world, and to countries that were part of the former British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Its home and its heartland is in Great Britain, where theaters up and down the country hold pantomimes, always called pantos for short, any time between early December and February. They are not religious performances, and often make little reference to Christmas, but they are a firmly established part of the festive season that surrounds Christmas and the New Year.
The word "pantomime" comes from the ancient Greek words panto, which means all, and mimos, which means mimic.
The English tradition of pantomime is connected with the continental European performance art form of commedia dell'arte, which was popular from the 16th century onwards. The commedia forms of stock characters, minimal plots and improvisation can all be seen in panto to this day.
Panto has several stock characters or types, which can almost always be found in a production. The most famous is the pantomime dame, who is always played by a man dressed up as a woman. Often he will be a middle-aged man playing a middle-aged woman and will wear colorful and sometimes improbable clothes.
The second most common stock character is the villain. Every panto needs a villain, and the audience is encouraged to boo him very loudly at every opportunity. The actor playing the villain, and villains are often but not exclusively male, will try to encourage the audience to boo him even more.
Where there's a villain, there is always a hero, and the panto hero, or heroine, is often young and often unjustly victimized but comes out the winner in the end.
Another typical stalwart of all panto casts is the Principal Boy, who is always played by a young and attractive woman dressed in male costume. Despite this she will still be very pretty.
Many pantos also run to a pantomime horse, two actors in a horses costume with one playing the back legs and the other the front, or some other four-legged animal.
The most unusual aspect of the whole performance, for those not used to it, is the mandatory audience participation which always involves lots of shouting at and along with the cast. Typical shouts that occur in all pantos are "he's behind you" when a villain appears, and a long argument between audience and any cast member which involves shouting either "oh no it isn't" or "oh yes it is".
Slapstick is an important element, as it was in commedia dell'arte, and will involve actors messing around on stage, most commonly in scenes set in bakeries or decorating rooms. This is an excuse for actors to throw water and flour and other messy materials at each other, some of which might end in the audience too.
