Third Coast Review contributor Tory Crowley is a native Midwesterner currently living in Budapest, Hungary. Please enjoy her European cultural notes.
When I told my British co-worker that I’d be spending the holidays in England with my English boyfriend, her first question was, “Are you going to the Pantomime? It’s a Christmas tradition!”
I had never heard of the Pantomime. All I could picture was a man with white face paint in a black beret miming being trapped in a box. “No,” she said. “It’s an over-the-top, unserious, flashy musical play. You’d love it.”
My boyfriend was less enthused. Thankfully, when we arrived in Old Blighty on December 23, his mother gave us a pair of tickets to their local theater for the Pantomime the next day.
It was happening! Through piecing together many conversations, I deduced that a Pantomime would be a cross between a Christmas pageant, a drag show, and a low-budget WWE-style wrestling match. One friend advised, “Try to be drunk when you see it. It’s the only way I got through it.”
Two and a half hours (and two Baileys) later, I concluded that the British Pantomime is not just a theater performance. It’s a rite of passage to British culture. No, it didn’t make much sense to my American brain, but then again, it wasn’t meant to.
The Pantomime is a family-friendly musical comedy staged primarily during the Christmas season. Traditionally, the Pantomime is a parody of a fairy tale. The one I saw was a parody of Dick Whittington and His Cat, a story I’ve never heard but is apparently a well-known English folktale. Imagine if a live-action version of Frozen was rewritten as a series of Second City sketches. It’s kind of like that.
To be clear, the parody isn’t subtle, ironic, or too cool. It is incredibly sincere. This is on purpose. The show also has beloved key componants, like parody songs, slapstick comedy, familiar phrases, audience participation, and a Pantomime Dame.
These familiar tropes are what make the story endearing. It’s why these Brits return to the Pantomime year after year. Take the Pantomime Dame. Every good Pantomime show has her, a middle-aged woman played by a male actor. She’s kind of like a drag queen crossed with a sitcom aunt, with a dash of zealous PTA mom.
Another beloved element of the Pantomime is audience participation. It’s not optional. Audiences are expected—required—to participate. This includes a call-and-response (“It’s behind you!”). This includes standing up to dance. This includes shouting and jeering at the villain. This includes gentle (and perhaps not so gentle) heckling of the audience.
This can be a bit weird for a pleasant Midwesterner like myself, accustomed to quietly sitting back and giving a polite golf clap when I’m excited. But these elements are as expected and beloved as singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at a Cubs game.
What I appreciate about these Pantomime traditions is that they are cultural glue. They bond together generations. They embrace seriousness and silliness at the same time. It’s not refined, sarcastic, or overly nostalgic, which is actually the appeal of many American Christmas traditions. Think: The Rockettes, White Elephant, or watching A Charlie Brown Christmas for the thousandth time. At the Pantomime, the Brits taught me that the best Christmas traditions can sometimes just be people willing to shout at the stage together, and that’s beautiful.
If you’re ever fortunate enough to be invited to an English Pantomime show, go.
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