The English pantomime developed out of the commedia dell’arte, a form of theatre that arose in Italy in the 16th century, and was characterised by comic improvisation based on sketches and masked types. Unusually for the period, the commedia dell’arte featured professional actors, with women rather than boys playing the female roles. Performers typically acted outside on temporary stages, utilising props, frequently travelling, and becoming prominent during carnival time.
Many of the principal characters in the commedia dell’arte had regional affiliations: the greedy Venetian merchant Pantalone, the Bolognese pedant Il Dottore, and the manipulative Neapolitan Pulcinella, the basis for the character of Punch in Punch and Judy. But the mischevious Harlequin, born in Bergamo but popularised in Paris, came to be the most famous of all these comic types.
During the 17th century, the Harlequinade developed in Britain. A slapstick adaption of the commedia dell’arte, it revolved around Harlequin and his love for Columbine, Columbine’s miserly father Pantaloon, the buffoonish but troublesome Clown, and the white-faced servant Pierrot. The Harlequinade was originally a mime, and a small part of a longer performance that drew upon classical sources.
Gradually dialogue was added, and the frenetic Harlequinade became the highlight of many a show, with children attending the theatre to witness the action especially around Christmas and New Year. Fairy tales and nursery rhymes supplanted classical literature as the source material for the rest of the performance, and as this became increasingly comic in its own right, the Harlequinade faded and the modern pantomime had arrived, by about the turn of the twentieth century.
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Berwick Kaler has been the panto dame at York Theatre Royal for 37 years. Eschewing the reliance of other theatres on celebrity guests, the pantomimes he writes, stars in, and typically co-directs stay close to the traditions of the Harlequinade and the commedia dell’arte, fast-paced, full of slapstick comedy, and striving towards an atmosphere of improvisation.
With York Theatre Royal undergoing a £4.1 million redevelopment – a process which began in early 2015 and was scheduled to last nine months, but remains ongoing and ludicrously still in need of funds – this year’s pantomime was moved to the custom-built Signal Box Theatre at the city’s National Railway Museum. This has a 1,000-seat capacity, but unconventionally a traverse stage, with the audience positioned in ten rows either side of a railway track.
The traverse setting is being billed as a pantomime first. However it posed a unique set of challenges for Kaler this year, as he worked towards an adaptation entitled Dick Whittington (and His Meerkat). As he told the York Press:
‘It’s a 1,000-seat tent; I won’t be able to fly; I can’t lean on a proscenium arch wall; we can’t throw water; every entrance has to be completely choreographed when normally in panto you try to keep it raw. So what we have to do is use our imagination a little more; we have to do that and, to be fair, the audience will have to do that too.’
In fact the close proximity of the audience enlivens this version of Dick Whittington, bringing out some of the best qualities of Kaler’s pantos. The absence of flight or buckets of water, and some of the traditions that are lost – for instance the practice of the villain always making his entrance left of stage – scarcely seem to matter, and in their place the core of improvisation seems more earnest and more robust, encouraged by interactions with crowd members, who effectively cross the performance space whenever they make a belated appearance or take their leave before the end of acts.
The sight of stagehands pushing sections of the scenery on rails adds a hardworking air which only bolsters the audience’s willingness to participate. The glow-in-the-dark neon segment, an aquatic underworld, is a novelty in three dimensions. Accompanied by the rest of the regular cast – headed by Martin Barrass, Suzy Cooper, and David Leonard, with the aid of local wildlife in the form of an inquisitive butterfly – Dick Whittington is one of Berwick Kaler and York Theatre Royal’s best pantomimes in years.
