What is Pantomime?
Pantomime is as far as I know, a peculiarly British tradition and goes back at least 100 years. Pantomimes always take place at Christmas and nearly always have stories based around well known children’s stories such as Peter Pan, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty etc.
They are very audience interactive. You certainly boo the villian, etc., but you should also have several arguments between characters and the audience.

eg.

Wicked queen in Snow White. “I am the fairest of them all”
Audience - “Oh no you’re not!”

Queen - “Oh yes I am!”

Audience - “Oh no you’re not!”

Another traditional one is the ‘behind you’ routine.
eg. in Sleeping Beauty. The bear sneaks up behind the nurse. Princess encourages audience to warn nurse, who of course does not believe them.

“It’s behind you!”
“You’re just having me on.”

And so on until the nurse turns around and screams at the sight of the bear.
There’s also a point in Sleeping Beauty where the audience are shouting “Kiss him” to the princess with regard to the frog.

A well trained panto audience will do this sort of thing quite spontaneously.

Other elements that are common in pantomime are slapstick - custard pies etc being thrown in people’s faces, the principal boy being played by a very fetching girl in tights, and characters such as the ugly sisters being played OTT in drag with lots of commedy routines and hilarious costumes.

Some pantomimes are newly written, some have particular routines that date back a surprisingly long time.

In recent years there has been a bit of a tendency to cast big name soap stars in pantomimes. Some TV actors don’t adapt well to a live audience. Panto requires particular skills. John Inman (Are you being served) is a long-time panto regular, doing (as you might expect) the drag characters, and is very good at it.

Scottish pantos seem to rely more on local talent (Gareth Thomas lives in Scotland). The flyer for Sleeping Beauty doesn’t mention any of the cast by name, the panto itself is seen as the draw.

Such a charmer!!

What is it about midgets, I mean come on hitting me across the back and screaming that at me isn’t going to make me utter the words “your place or mind?”

Let me set the scene crowded bar, group of little people behind me. I had registered that there was a crowd of shorter than average males clustered behind me but had not thought anything about it (well it is panto season after all). Jokes aside but the top of their heads was about in line with my bust. How was I to know that he was trying to make moves on me by looking at the top of his head.

Anyway, I survived the evening got soaked to the skin waiting for my taxi (I won’t take unlicenced taxis’) so had to put up with a few hero’s/predators checking that I hadn’t had a fight with my boyfriend or anything while waiting for it. I peeled off at about 1am leaving the others to go on to somewhere else. I’m sobber in pain cold and pretty much fed up another hour or so off drunk guys getting in my face wasn’t going to make me a happy camper.

Its sunday, I’m going to make some shortbread cookies to take with me along with wine (for others) and elderflower fizz for me to take to the jewelery party tonight. Its cold, wet the washing machine is on and I’m not going anywhere until I have to. So will sort out all my jewelery (I haven’t counted it but there is a rucksac full of stuff I have made) and generally hibinate until I leave the house

Hope everyone has a warm sunday!!