Everyone hates to love Pantomime. Each year garish posters for Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk are slapped onto walls and pushed through letterboxes, the faces of an X Factor reject and the bloke from Eastenders looming from them with polished teeth and glittering eyes. Playhouses compete to land a crowd-pulling name, the crème de la crème plucked straight from the Mail Online’s Showbiz section, and smother their lack of acting talent in sparkles and wigs. Despite the ridiculousness of it all, pantomime is embraced each year, with sell-out productions and large profit margins, offering all-inclusive, family-friendly entertainment that takes advantage of that core value of Christmas, as well as offering an escape for the nation from the six o’clock news. It has tickled the hearts of the British for over 500 years, and while we may laud it as a British institution, its origins are firmly planted in Ancient Greece, the mummery plays of the Middle Ages, and most significantly, Italy.

Commedia dell’arte was a form of Italian theatre that emphasised the physicality of the performance and the manner in which it is enacted, rather than the subject of the play. Masks, music, dance and acrobatics were all employed, there was no script, only improvisation, and the art form utilised a set of stock characters to place further emphasis upon the play’s performative art, rather than its narrative. Usually the characters consisted of a pair of star-crossed lovers, an old man, and a slew of servants, the names altered depending upon the Italian province and country in which the production was being performed. Since the commedia dell’arte was a travelling form of theatre, it soon spread beyond the Alps into the fairgrounds and markets of France, and then into Britain by the seventeenth century.

Its success was immediate: by the 1660s, stock characters from the commedia dell’arte were incorporated into English plays, usually as light comic relief at the end of more ‘high-brow’ cultural entertainment, and named ‘harlequinades’. These would follow Harlequin and Columbine, two lovers who drew the fury of Columbine’s father, Pantaloon, and the bumbling Clown. Chase scenes, magic, and a large amount of slapstick proved a hit with audiences, and in the early eighteenth century, rivalries began to spring up between theatres in London staging commedia dell’arte performances. After the restoration of Charles II, only three theatres were licensed to perform ‘spoken drama’, and so the early harlequinades, up until 1843, were mainly dumb shows. Despite this, John Rich, the manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre and the Theatre Royal, saw the success of the Commedia characters, and made them the focus of the performance, rather than being tagged onto the end of one or played during the intermission as comedic relief.

Over time, the harlequinade grew longer in running time until it was a performance in and of itself. The opening drama, usually a story from the Classical world, or as was popular in the 1800s, a fairytale, would transform itself through the introduction of a Fairy Godmother character into the harlequinade setting, adapting the characters into their new identities as harlequinade characters. With the ascension of Queen Victoria, and the marked emphasis placed upon Christmas during her reign, pantomimes became exclusive to that season, rather than being performed throughout the year. By the 1840s, the harlequinades were stretched to ridiculousness with names such as ‘Harlequin and the Tyrant of Gobblemupandshrunkemdowno’. Then, after the passing of the Theatres Act of 1843 (which permitted spoken dialogue to be performed in all theatres) and the rise of the music hall, the burlesque and comic opera became popular, and the harlequinade lost its magic. It was soon reduced to its pre-eminence, as a comedic intermission or prologue, until it died out by the middle of the twentieth century.

Despite this, features of the harlequinade have evolved the pantomime into what it is today: the tomfoolery and slapstick still exists, as well as the stock characters (the protagonist, their romantic interest, the parental Panto Dame, the Clown and the Villain). The separation of narrative based drama and physical comedy that theatres employed since the 1700s merged to create the pantomime, with its spectacle of magic and transformation as well as its bawdy puns and audience participation.

It is easy to dismiss and ridicule the pantomime as ‘low-culture’ when Jason Donovan is plastered on an advertising board for one, but its popularity for over half a millennium highlights it as a form of culture filling a contemporary cultural gap: in the past it was because its slapstick humour could be easily mimed and enjoyed exterior to the patent theatres, and now it is because its family friendly nature takes advantage of the Christmas values so prone to sentimentality and nostalgia. Its ‘low-culture’ label is even being compromised, with Sir Ian McKellen taking the stage as Widow Twankey in the Old Vic’s Aladdin in 2013, and playwright Mark Ravenhill penning the Barbican’s first pantomime, Dick Whittington.

The art form is constantly evolving and renewing itself to contemporary demands and gaps, and in another 500 years, a different strain will be bred anew, and a new generation will hate to love the pantomime.

 

 

PANTOWATCH! Tis the season to get drunk at a matinee. Varsity brings you Cambridge’s best options:

CUADC/Footlights Pantomime 2015: Robin Hood

The CUADC/Footlights combination strikes again! As they build upon the immense popularity of the pantomimes they have staged over the past few years (previous productions included The Princess and the Pea and last year’s The Emperor’s New Clothes), this year they craft the tale of Robin Hood, incorporating the well-known combination of Marxism and talking trees into their ADC headliner. Featuring a hefty cast of “the cream of Cambridge’s comedy and musical worlds” and Will Scarlett, you can’t miss Robin Hood (really, it’s on for two weeks).

Wednesday 25th November – Saturday 5th December [Sunday 29th excluding], 7.45pm, ADC. Matinees on Friday 27th and Saturday 28th November and Tuesday 1st, Thursday 3rd and Saturday 5th December, 2.30pm, ADC.

 

Mighty Players Panto: Poison Apple

Last year we had the Biochemistry Department pantomime, a Christ’s College pantomime, and A Very Girton Pantomime (set in a land far, far away), and it seems everyone has given up on achieving their dreams of panto this year. All except, of course, the Mighty Players, who have channelled their namesake into bringing us a mash-up between Snow White and Cinderella. Gifting us with cross-dressing, social media, and a character called Chardonnay, the Mighty Players have promised that it will be “at least the second best student panto in Cambridge this Michaelmas”. Modest thespians, who would have thought it?

Friday 27th November, 7.30pm and Saturday 28th November, 1pm, The Diamond, Selwyn College

 

Cinderella

The Cambridge Arts Theatre is the annual host of the pantomime for the residents of Cambridge, performing a classic, popular story with all the traditional trimmings. The cast includes Rosemary Ashe, Suzie Mathers, and a bunch of other actors and actresses from the West End who you’ve probably never heard of. As usual, there will be confusion over exactly who Buttons is (“he’s not in the Disney film! Disney is canon!”), the stepmother and sisters in drag, and a reminder of your old age and bitter cynicism as laughing, happy children surround you. Fun all round, then.

Thursday 3rd December – Sunday 17th January, The Cambridge Arts Theatre. Times vary, check the schedule at https://www.cambridgeartstheatre.com