Pantomime – an under-appreciated form

‘He’s behind you’; ‘Oh no he isn’t’; ‘Boooooo’; ‘Hissssssssss’;’ Yeeeeeeyyy’. There is nothing more satisfying or deliciously child-like than screaming this at a performer at the top of your voice; releasing an un-self-consciousness flow of energy and emotion and somehow believing fully in the actions of the absurdly dressed residents of the stage. 

Pantomime is a peculiar creature: it exists as its own categorisation, has its own ‘season’ and it does wonders at the Box Office; but in terms of credibility and integrity it has almost nil, sitting behind the Musical, and it is never going to win any serious writing or acting awards. Yet as a form it is very intricate and complicated and is much beloved in British culture, indeed, it is a very British form – chock full of irony, innuendo, role-reversals, cultural references and a ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ form of participation and is heavily steeped in tradition, while remaining perpetually modern.  I instinctively think that pantomime as a form in the theatre is thoroughly under-appreciated and has the potential for a much greater synthesis. 

A regular night out at the theatre, in my experience as a constant attendee and reviewer, is one of a pursuit enjoyed quietly in the dark – a very restrained, bourgeois activity to be reflected on and discussed thoughtfully in corners at the appropriate time after the show. I know this isn’t always the case, and there are a lot of exciting shows that break this mould, but the image of theatre, or Theatre, as a high-brow, scholarly endeavour, is alienating and exclusionary to a lot of people; which is a tragedy considering utterly unique and transformative power of the stage.  Live theatre has the advantage of taking place in the same space and time as the audience which means they can interact in ways that are immediate and transformative – at the cinema you cannot cause a change in dynamic of the actors onscreen, at a concert there is rarely a narrative to respond to, and books certainly don’t allow for any collective connection. I think it is time for theatre to move further away from its crusty image and, in this brave new world of youth, digital media and interactive content, I think theatre is in a very privileged position to forge something new and innovative. In this respect Pantomime, as a form, is trying to show us the way.

When I refer to Pantomime as a form I don’t necessarily mean the content (the childish themes, linear morality that lacks subtlety and celebrities dressed in sparkly costumes), but the open, inclusive, interactive entrance into a narrative that had connects both tradition and the present with a community of engaged participants. I was recently an usher at the Iris Theatre in Covent Garden as they put on a promenade theatre piece of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. During the play, which moved around several areas of the garden and church, the audience was just as much part of the action as the actors; they were a riotous mob on the steps of the Forum in Rome, they were conspirators plotting outside Brutus’s house, they were members of the roman senate – some even sat in thrones on-stage; this was done in a much more subtle way than a pantomime, but the result was the same, a blurring of the line and a communal, interactive experience. In fact if we look back in time to the performances of Shakespeare’s plays at theatres during Tudor/Jacobean times, they were often riotous affairs, the hoi polloi would be in the pit closest to the stage eating and shouting and drinking, emitting various bodily liquids – the actors of the time would have had to be adept at dealing with the heckling and noise – the audience were involved in the performance in a way that is nothing like the quiet enjoyment Shakespeare demands now.  This is what seems odd about the theatre: despite the fact you may be incredibly moved and inspired, existing in a realm of experience you didn’t even know could be possible, you must remain quiet and subdued, keeping all the wonders inside; the sense of a Dionysian collective connection is stifled. Pantomime doesn’t demand this, it says: interact, let out your feelings, chant, heckle and laugh: be at one with the crowd.

It is this sense of ‘line blurring’ that is pantomimes greatest potential and if we look at Baudrillard’s  theory of hyperreality we can get a clearer picture of how panto represents and fits into the contemporary world of multiple and digital existence that is becoming ever more smudged together with daily lives. The concept of hyperreality is a complex ever evolving one, but the most relevant notion here is the disappearance of the distinction between real and illusion – in this context: between the audience, safe in their role of spectator, and the actors, part of the construct that constitutes the play. According to Baudrillard, the digital, simulated nature of our existence, in many areas of our lives, has made the real/illusion distinction erroneous, ‘we no longer exist as playwrights or actors but as terminals of multiple networks’. He states ‘there are no longer either actors or spectators; all are immersed in the same reality’. The form of the pantomime lends itself to this, the audience are just as much part of the show as the performers, the actors make no attempt to pretend the show isn’t a construct they are acting out, they talk to the audience, respond to their shouts, occasionally throwing things at them or brining them up on-stage. The distinction that exists in more ‘serious’ forms of theatre between, real/illusion is blurred and exploited, it can be seen as playful and, in a way, subversive.  

The conventions of panto are bewilderingly complex to the layman, even explaining them becomes a tad galling: the main protagonist is a girl dressed as a boy, that everyone knows is a girl but has to pretend they don’t; there is more often than not a ‘dame’ who is a man dressed as a lady in the most conspicuously ridiculous dresses and make-up, again we are all in on the conspiracy and there are often several jokes based around the ambiguous gender of these characters. The stories are loosely based on a set number of well known fairy tales, but are cut up and amended in an infinite number of ways, jokes and references are made to current events, some real and some imaginary; the narrative involves a mixture of the world of the fairytale and the current digital world we inhabit. Sometimes people or celebrities appear as themselves or the characters they play elsewhere, sometimes they are the same characters but under a different guise. Sometimes audience members are invited on-stage to take part in the action, or invited to make collective decisions about the narrative. 

Pantomime is more akin to a hyperreal environment and this is what it has to teach us: real and illusion is becoming irrelevant in our everyday lives, why should it be maintained in a ‘fictional’ environment; This is not a call to turn every play into a pantomime – but more like a big comedy rubber hand pointing towards the potential of something new. Theatre has the great advantage of happening in the here and now of a person’s perception, it should play to this; in a way theatre should become less real; we have enough reality on TV and at the cinema, we need a new form of theatre, with the atmosphere of a football match, chants and emotion, spontaneous unique events – not like the X-factor, Big Brother kind – but a new credible form, a synthesis: Ibsen plays incorporating pantomime dynamics: A Deleuzian intersection of two lines of flight assembling into a new becoming; a theatre for everyone where audience and actor are one and the same event. And I’m sure there have been many experiments along these lines in small dark rooms at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and who’s to say these brave pioneers are not the avant garde taking the first steps into no-man’s-land?

Pantomime is under-appreciated for the glut of possibilities it contains, and I’m not suggesting that panto isn’t based primarily on a Pavlovian response to recognised conventions (‘yeyyyyy’ to the good guy, ‘booooooo’ to the bad guy) and lacking in subtlety; but the form, the potential of the playful, inclusive, community-based engagement that can transform the narrative and therefore produce a unique, affecting event is the golden goose to be set free.