Fonz Moves In On British "Panto"

If it’s Christmas it must be time for “panto,” the deliciously vulgar British holiday entertainment. Its eternal subjects are Cinderella, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Dick Whittington and His Cat, and Mother Goose. The leading man is always a girl in tights and there is always a “dame” part, played by a man. Only in Cinderella there are two dame parts, the two Ugly Sisters.

Another thing about the pantos is that there is always audience participation, a pleasure very thin on the ground in our modern age.

Still, as Michael Henderson relates, it’s a wonder that panto works at all.

Men dressing up as women, risqué jokes in front of young children, unfunny catch-phrases, audience participation in nonsense songs, and the willful stupidity of performers who can't see what is visible to everybody else. And you expect people to pay good money to watch this every Christmas? No wonder you lot lost the colonies.

Well, I remember with some pleasure the pantos I saw as a child in London. But I remember that I did not like the idea of the leading man, Aladdin, played by a girl in tights. What was the point of all that female leg, I fumed. Little did I know.

Panto is experiencing something of a boomlet these days. Sir Ian McKellen appeared in one last year and now we Yanks are getting in on the act. The Fonz, Henry Winkler, is appearing as Captain Hook at Wimbledon this season.

On a whim, I decided to Google panto and immediately found that all the British newspapers have a panto article running today.

The Times’s Janice Turner strongly disapproves of panto going upmarket. She went to a panto at the Barbican and declares

This will be the last time I attend “posh panto”... It looks like panto, it just doesn’t feel like panto.

And off she goes to tell her readers exactly why the downscale panto at Wimbledon is much better than the posh panto in the City and the West End. Among other things,

At Wimbledon the dancing girls are comely and well drilled, at the Barbican they are chunky and half-arsed.

And really, how dumb can you be to put good money out to see chunky and half-arsed dancing girls?