Pantomime is a curious entertainment - a form of ritual theatre staged around the winter solstice. Originally silent (a form of mime), it is now anything but, with extensive vocalisation from both the performers and the audience.
The stories are generally well-known (drawn from popular folk-tales and similar sources), populated with stock characters, including a principal boy, generally played by a young lady with shapely legs, the heroine, also played by a young lady (which gives an added edge to the inevitable romance) and a dame, played by a man as an exaggeration of a lewd middle-aged lady. Scripts change from year to year, but generally contain four strands of humour: visual, topical, corny and downright rude. In the UK this is considered to be family entertainment.
The story of Aladdin comes from the Thousand-and-one Nights cycle. The original is set in China, but a very Arabian China (populated with the same genies and magicians that inhabit the rest of the tales). The pantomime has imported the Chinese setting, but in this case, it is a very English China - hence it is set in a Chinese laundry. There are numerous versions presented here, including Stuart Ardern's Large-Cast Aladdin, James Barry's Small-Cast Aladdin, Geoff Bamber's off-beat short version for children and a rhyming version.
The tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is also from the Thousand-and-one Nights, but is less well established in the pantomime canon - so the minor characters are not so well established. Here we present Richard Coleman's short version in verse: Rhyming Ali Baba.
Puss in Boots is a common European folk-tale, complete with a ritual dual of magical beings - in this case the cat and the ogre. As with Aladdin the original story has little or no role for the dame, nor is their any requirement for a pantomime donkey, thrown in for good measure in Stuart's Arden full-cast version. (There is also a small-cast version of Puss in Boots, by James Barry.)
Many cultures have traditional stories of ladders to the sky or the clouds. Jack and the Beanstalk (or, sometimes, Jack the Giant Killer - blending it with other stories) is an English version, dating (in written form) from the 18th century, brought up to date here by tlc Creative (the writing collective of Damian Trasler, David Lovesy and Steve Clark), in another traditional pantomime version by Bob Heather, in the shorter version (aimed at schools) Jack and his Amazing Multi-Coloured Beanstalk, by Geoff Bamber or in the shortest Rhyming Jack and the Beanstalk by Richard Coleman
Cinderella is probably the most familiar story, thanks to Charles Perrault's distillation of a variety of European rags-to-riches stories. There are three versions of the story presented on this site. The first is a full, two-act version by Stuart Ardern and Bob Heather, the second is Geoff Bamber's 30 minute version for schools and youth theatre groups, entitled Cinders, and the third version is a very short Rhyming Cinderella by Richard Coleman.
The original version of the full-length script was performed by a village company (in a village hall without a stage) and contained dozens of impenetrable local jokes. Bob Heather was so frustrated with it that he reworked it for a conventional stage (and succeeded in replacing punch-lines that include the names of village worthies with jokes which would work anywhere - no mean feat). There is still one invisible local reference: the Ministers' song (in Act 1, Scene 4) contains the names of all the ladies who had taken part in the previous season's production!
Dick Whittingtonis a true story - but only in as far as Richard Whittington really was mayor of London (co-opted for part of a term, and subsequently elected to the office three times) around the end of the fourteenth century. His claims to fame include a bequest to build the first public lavatory in London. The story about him coming to London penniless, with a cat as his only friend, began to circulate a century or two later, around the time of Shakespeare (which seems to have inspired Stuart Ardern's.) The more common pantomime version, typified by [Dick Whittington Version 2] by Bob Heather, is a more conventional struggle between good and evil, with the hero, backed by Fairy Bow-Bells, battling with the evil and magical King Rat. Once again, Richard Coleman provides a short rhyming version, told as Whittington and His Crazy Cat.
