Before the start of Aladdin in Milton Keynes this week a promotional video showed Brian Blessed in oriental costume bellowing to the audience that pantomime had never been so popular in its long history and that Britain was still full of people longing to shout ‘He’s behind you!’, ‘Oh, yes it is!’, ‘Oh, no it isn’t!’, or whatever. It was a Sunday afternoon matinée and the theatre was full. The same had been true the week before at Cinderella in Northampton. The evidence seemed to suggest that Brian Blessed was right. But I did find myself wondering why.
The pantomime may still be able to fill provincial theatres, but as entertainment it has deteriorated steadily over the years. Many of its traditional features still survive — the cross-dressing, the risqué sexual innuendoes, the audience participation. But others have not. While the ‘pantomime dame’, always played by a man, remains a guaranteed feature (Widow Twankey in Aladdin, the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella), the ‘principal boy’, played by a girl in breeches, has vanished.
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