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. 

Blowing Your Nose On Stage.

I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar,

And things unlucky charge my fantasy: I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.

Cinna the Poet – Julius Caesar – William Shakespeare

The broad imposing figure of Mark Anthony stands before the mass of faces, at the apex of everyone’s vision, he holds up his arms as passionate invective is pulled from his lips into the ears of the ravenous horde. Caesar is dead and betrayal and lusty ambition are to blame.

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

The stage is set out around the ornate white coffin of Caesar as Mark Anthony speaks into a big vintage silver microphone, holding aloft the perished blood splattered robe of Caesar, pointing out each bloodied slash in turn, his voice rumbling out into the dusky cloud-scarred sky. Looming over him is the concrete frame of the church with two large bullet shaped windows either side of him and big iron bells sitting 10 ft above his head waiting to ring out at the death of Caesar. The throng, increasingly rowdy shout and call for retribution, baying, the brethren is cocked:

All - Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!

Behind Mark Anthony goat-masked figures prowl under the great black doors of the church plotting and fomenting the unrest with pointed thrusts:

All - We'll mutiny.

First Citizen - We'll burn the house of Brutus.

The multitude is ready to blow, the masked men shout and stamp their feet, betrayal, corruption, villainy, between the masks and the shouts stands a sweet elderly gentleman, wearing a black ill-fitting suit and full of doddery shaky fragility, he pulls a hanky from his pocket, scrunches it up in his rubbery old-man hand and casually blows his nose. There is...

Hang on a minute...

What was that?

***

I  was volunteering at the Iris Theatre at the Actors Church in Covent Garden and the following is something that happened that you won’t read in the news, but if the world was indeed in my command, you jolly well would be. Reality was at stake. *

I was an Usher, presiding over a production of Julius Caesar, fully comfortable with my role wearing black and standing in the shadows, when a little old man reached into reality and blew his nose with it.

Already leaning on the side of danger, the show was a promenade theatre piece that took place in the grounds of the church and moved around the garden with the different scenes of the play; the audience were told when to move to a new area and several of the spectators were recruited for small non-speaking parts. 
In terms of the potential flammability of reality, the 'dramatic petrol' had already been spilt but in none of the previous 15 performances had anyone dropped a match, I guess we had somehow got used to the acrid smell and didn’t see it coming.

During Act 3 scene II, after Caesar has been killed and his coffin is in the middle of the scene, there is a piece where Mark Anthony says this:

You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

The crucial bit here was about making a ring around Caesar (the coffin), ordinarily a few people in the front row, crept up self consciously and knelt in a semi circle on the steps around the coffin, all the while looking back at their friends and family giggling. There was no danger they would break through that film of the imaginary world and discard reality like a soiled tissue, they were mere visitors, fully secure in their role.

On this night however, the audience was a little too eager and with an unfortunate hand movement from Mark Anthony, the crowd thought it was time to move on and surged towards the stage, only to realise pretty quickly that the scene was still going.  Their faces moved in two directions at once and they did a strange dance of indecision, as two forces worked on them at once – fight, flight, fight, flight; chicken-like they prowled the stage. 

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent...   

They were suddenly trapped between worlds; actors mixed and collided with non-actors – people collided with characters, bodies with bodies – there was a moment of pure spontaneity and perplexity, a pause of infinity when no one knew what was going to happen.  Would the audience fight, push forward into the scene, take their mistake to the end, grab the microphone and overthrow Rome three acts before it should have been done – in a moment of pure hyperreality, reality and illusion disappears into each other and the play becomes all and nothing of our immanent perception; and for that transient recess in certainty, it seemed possible.

As they collided the two imaginary domains became no more real or present than the other - nobody knew who they were and confusion was the new emperor, we all waited for someone to take charge, reinstate reality and bring us all back to that sturdy plane of consistency. 

That person was inevitably Mark Anthony, his voice faltered for a second before restoring a sense of solidity as Shakespeare’s realm won out, putting everyone back in their place, and the new possible world of multiplicity and uncertainty died rather quickly. 

The misplaced audience, coming back to themselves, sort of awkwardly stood next to the coffin, with some going straight back to sit down, but our elderly hero had gone too far and had managed to get himself stuck behind the actors, the show went on:

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

And as Mark Anthony was lamenting, and gesticulating and wailing at the unsavoury death of Caesar, there stood our man, just off to the right, shuffling with his hands in his pockets; one last vestige of infinity, he had the look of a defeated man, a dribbly eyed silhouette, stood behind his wife, humming, waiting like a obedient puppy, while she talks to her friend in the street.  

He had sweetness about him that contrasted the incendiary mood of the context, but he was still caught in-between and he had a decision to make. To stay or to go, the show or the audience? In a moment of pure genius he sidestepped any decision and made all other reality redundant. 

There was nothing of a pretence, just serenity as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a hanky, blew his nose with it, in that strangely violent, trumpetty, old man way before putting it back in his pocket; and with that action he had created a third way, a new reality unhampered by expectation.  He blew his nose with convention and as Mark Anthony was holding up Caesar's blood splattered toga, our hero was holding up his soiled hanky and saying: ‘Yes, I am an uninvited audience member on-stage; yes, I am trespassing on the steps of the Forum in Rome during a state funeral; yes I am that sly shadow, that inky excess, to be hidden under, words and clothes and things and opinions and Yes! Yes! Yes!, deal with it’.

The juxtaposition was fantastic: death, betrayal, strength – vulnerability, hankey, doddery old man.#

The show went on and he still stood in utter tranquillity, other actors moving around him, he kept looking around, occasionally making a movement to tease a jump back into the audience. On went the show:

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it: they are wise and honourable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:

By now we were all getting used to him, he was a presence in his own right, no longer a mistake, he had won, he had defeated our collective binary perception, cracked it and smelted it into something new and shiny like it was the most normal thing in the world, his magic hanky had worked. 

And it was only when we were no longer looking that he disappeared from the stage, I scanned the crowd but he was nowhere to be seen, he had gone like some kind of mysterious saggy-faced shaman.  Of course the gap he left very quickly caved in, the scene ended and the play moved on to Philippi and the eventual tragedy ensued, but when the actors took their bow and the audience clapped and applauded I think we all knew who the real star of the show was.

*I refer to ‘reality’ here as a structure of expectation, the collective ego wrapping any given scene or situation in an imaginary certainty.

#I understand that Othello has that handkerchief malarkey going on, but at no point is it brandished and used, quite vigorously on-stage by an ageing man in an ill-fitting suit.