Pantomime

Pantomime (c)

By 

Michael Casey

I was at a Panto earlier tonight, I was wondering how you explain a Panto to a foreigner. My wife a Shanghai girl has been to one but in the main it confused her. So me and the kids go to Panto while she stays at home and watches Phoenix the Chinese channel.

To start with a man dresses up as a woman, a badly dressed woman at that. A woman dresses up as a man and slaps her thighs all the time, and her thighs are always strapping, and what does strapping mean? Then there’s a cat who’s really a girl all dressed up.  Then there’s a cow who can dance, just what kind of grass has the cow been eating? Maybe a horse thrown in too, now this horse could never win a race, and no jockey would every ride such a horse. I used to be a trainee betting shop manager so can you imagine the kind of odds I’d give on a Pantomime horse in a race against a cow, perhaps we’d only give 5 beans, and that would turn into a Beanstalk.

On the subject of Fairies just why are they so cheerful? Are they drinking real ale before they appear in a flash of fireworks, and as for the wicked witch why did she have a Russian accent tonight, a kind of deep throaty voice, almost like a man, a kind of Cruela de Ville but with more sequins. And just how do they learn to scream “AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” and all manner of evil sounds. Is there a kind of evil choirmaster who teaches evil witches how to croak and scream etc. Do they have an evil hymn sheet and they practice. Then and only then can they become evil witches in Pantomime, or perhaps you have to pass a GCSE in all things evil  before you can strut the stage. Oh yes you do, oh no you don’t, oh yes you do, oh no you don’t. Its all so confusing, no wonder my Shanghai wife stays home.

Dancers dance and there is a musician slaving away over 2 keyboards, he is down in the pits, why is it called pits anyway? Did the musician used to be a miner? Its all so confusing, oh yes it it, oh no it isn’t. but I tell you oh yes it is. Now dancers are  good and they throw themselves into it, or if you are a girl then there are boys who throw you around, they dancers twirl how they don’t get dizzy I’ll never know, do they practice in the park on the roundabout, dancers strapped to roundabouts for hours on end, then they get a certificate to prove they can dance and twirl and swing in Pantomime. They get Cadburys as a reward. 

Singing is a big thing in Panto, me I can only sing “I was born under a big brown cow, a big brown cow” because that’s what my siblings used to sing to me when I was a child. Chorus songs are sung and the audience joins in, and as a reward the cast throws things at you, luckily its sweets. So imagine you are from Shanghai and I just explained all this to you, would you want to see a Panto?

Oh yes I would, oh no I wouldn’t, oh yes I would, I’m all confused now, not Confucius.