Perennial pantomime villain Kit Hesketh-Harvey explains why this corny, hammed-up, ritualistic theatrical format is loved so dearly. Oh yes, it is!
IT’S as bizarre, as inexplicable to foreigners, as cricket or ‘Mornington Crescent’. It smells of sweets and sweat, of sherry and sulphur. It’s as gaudy, as tasteless, as a tinsel Christmas tree. Part Commedia dell’arte, part music hall, its political satire is as subtle as a bazooka, its rabid incorrectness as bawdy as a McGill seaside postcard. It’s also the emergency drip of our regional theatres, without which they couldn’t function financially. And it’s murder to do: I lose 20lb each season.
Pantomime is the safety valve that binds generations—indeed, this island—together. It’s a litmus test and defiant celebration of our Britishness and it sanctions the release of a year’s tension. The servants mock their masters as precisely as they did in the medieval Feast of Fools and, on Twelfth Night, in the midnight ‘cod’ pastiche of the run, the backstage crew mocks even the mockers.
It’s shot through with superstition. One must never utter the final line during rehearsals so as to jinx the opening night with a perfect rehearsal. One leaves the dressing room with one’s best foot forward, stepping out on the left—possibly a Masonic belief. No whistling, no peacock feathers, no flowers on stage and it’s unlucky to rehearse the bows.
The ‘Oh yes, you do’ and ‘It’s behind you’ are as ritualistic as the tree or pudding. The proscenium arch, the fourth wall, the suspension of disbelief—all become irrelevant. Corny routines—the chase scene, the custard-pie scene, the ghost gag—are greeted rowdily as long-lost friends, the drunken uncles at the party. The characters are as predictable as The Queen’s Speech or the Boxing Day hangover. The story barely matters.
This story is from the December 13 & 20, 2017 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the December 13 & 20, 2017 edition of Country Life UK.
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