With her thick eyebrows raised high on her forehead and the tip of her nose heavily dusted with rouge, Dan Leno’s Mother Goose was a sensation. A music hall celebrity, standup comedian and champion clog dancer, Leno was the star of late Victorian pantomime. Her career began at the Surrey Theater in 1886, and her performances, particularly her Mother Goose in 1902, which she performed alongside a troupe of live animals, came to define the role of the lady as as we know her now: the superior, unlucky in love, heart of the show.
Since the late 19th century, panto has been a regular fixture of the British festive season, with celebrities taking to the stage for six weeks to make everyone from children to great-grandparents laugh. I’ve always been a fan – in 2021 I saw three in one day. But over the last few seasons, I’ve often felt uncomfortable with some of the laughs directed at the panto ladies. Amidst the whirlwind of puns and increasingly flamboyant costumes, I’ve heard more and more that the joke presented to the audience is rooted in harmful gender stereotypes. When the water guns are empty and the glitter cannons have been fired, what’s so funny about a guy in a suit?
I’m not trying to make any social commentary. I’m just trying to be funny
“If I knew, I’d be a billionaire,” says Clive Rowe, who takes on the role of Mother Goose in this year’s panto at London’s Hackney Empire. Rowe is one of the most loved women in the world, and Mother Goose, a role for which she was nominated for an Olivier in 2008, is her 15th panto at the venue. “The response from the audience if you do it right is exhilarating,” she says of the joy of playing the lady. “It’s a standup comedy with a cast. It’s variety with a narrative.”
These are the traditions from which modern panto comes: music and variety hall, commedia dell’arte and the Regency clown era, directed by the great Joseph Grimaldi. In the late 19th century, when producer Augustus Harris saw how popular music hall was among the working classes, he began bringing stars like Leno to his huge pantos at the Theater Royal Drury Lane, in order to attract a wider audience . Panto became a more inclusive, cacophonous family affair, with one man taking center stage to welcome everyone in from the cold.
Panto sensation and champion clog dancer… Dan Leno as Mother Goose. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy
The theater has always embraced transvestism. From the Romans who played women long before women could play themselves, to male impersonators like Vesta Tilley, the highest-paid female performer of the music hall era, the genre has always been scrutinized, sent up and experimented with. In the early days of modern panto, women took on the main male roles, allowing them to show the audience a little leg. “But it was not a time when a lady could do anything unworthy,” says Nigel Ellacott, the wife of the Richmond Theater production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and a leading panto historian. “She couldn’t have a custard pie in her face. She couldn’t fall. So they looked at older male comedians and put them in female roles where they could be caricatured and funny.” And that, he says, is how we got our modern ladies to drag.
Many people like to separate the two. “I’ve always said I’m not a drag queen,” Rowe says bluntly. “I’m not trying to make any social commentary about femininity or masculinity. I’m just trying to be funny.” Ellacott echoes this point. “We’re not trying to be convincing. It’s not a drag act, where you really look like glamorous women.” This distinction is key. In panto it should be obvious that the lady is really a man dressed as a woman. Often the incongruity is the joke. It is made of cheerful way, but still, is it possible that this representation and our responses to it perpetuate harmful ideas of presenting as the “opposite” gender?
“I can’t go to a panto without feeling uncomfortable because of the kind of laughter there is,” says Sab Samuel, who is also known as drag queen Aida H Dee. “I’m enjoying myself and then I think, ‘What are you really laughing at here?'” Samuel runs Drag Queen Story Hour UK, a company which organizes drag queens reading stories to children in libraries. “Panto ladies are drag queens,” says Samuel firmly. “There is very little difference. We’ve been saying for years that Drag Queen Story Hour UK is in a library.”
‘We’re not trying to be convincing’… Nigel Ellacott (right) with Peter Robbins as the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian
But the two are treated very differently by the public. Where panto dames have been widely accepted as family entertainment, drag has historically been, and continues to be, the subject of significant discrimination. This is certainly true of Samuel’s experience. Over the past few years, Drag Queen Story Hour UK has received an onslaught of abuse and aggressive protests.
“I had to move house because my address was made public,” says Samuel. “This summer, I was followed all over the country with people calling me the words ‘peophile’ and ‘hairdresser’s foot.’ I was in a library reading my kids’ book about non-bullying, while outside the library, homophobic people were harassing parents and kids coming in.” Early in our conversation, Samuel receives a tweet notification. They raise the phone to show me the meme The top half is a picture of drag queens The bottom half is a firing squad.
Why is there such a stark difference in public sentiment towards panto ladies and drag queens? “They are different stories,” suggests Samuel. “Drag artists are seen as a representation of the queer community. They are always at the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights, and the panto ladies are not. Fanatics will happily accept a panto dame but not a drag performer.” In panto, as genre exploration is a joke, a one-off, safe in the proscenium arch, it is not seen as a threat to someone with preconceived ideas about reason. But in an everyday space like a library, with an act so rooted in queer history and experience, it’s harder to separate LGBTQ+ culture from the performer and performance . Although Drag Queen Story Hour UK is all about making children laugh, Samuel explains that the difference is that children are laughing with them, rather than at them. As Samuel says: “The panto dame is the joke. The drag queen just kidding.”
At London’s Royal Vauxhall Tavern, Tim Benzie and Paul Joseph have been writing pantos for queer adults for the past five years. This year’s is Cracked, a strict retelling of Snow White. Their main aim, after packing in as many gags as they can, is to ensure that panto traditions are done in a way that centers LGBTQ+ experiences. “With a lot of pantos, the main target is the children,” says Joseph. “Our responsibility is to queer adults. We’re there for the people who had a hard time growing up, to make sure they don’t get retraumatized by the same crap they would have spent years hearing from the beginning.
“Drag Queen Story Hour UK is a panto in a library”…Samuel aka Aida H Dee knows. Photo: Drag Queen Story Hour UK
“You can let people have the elements of the traditions they enjoy,” adds Joseph, “and have the things that will make people uncomfortable. It’s the writers’ responsibility to be better, funnier, smarter.” Small changes are changing the landscape of ladies today. Gradually more women are becoming ladies-in-waiting and drag performers are taking on other roles in shows, such as Dick Whittington’s tour last year.
The idea that pantomime can change and adapt to suit the day is nothing new. Over the years, Rowe has seen significant changes in jokes and scripts. “There are things we could have said 15 or 20 years ago, in all innocence,” he says, “that we wouldn’t say now, that wouldn’t be perceived as funny.” That adaptability is a fundamental part of the form, he says, reiterating that he hopes everyone feels welcome and included in every panto they’re a part of. “Pantomime, at its best, is always changing. It’s a commentary on the times, so it’s the work of pantomime metamorphosis.”
This is not about silencing comedy or condemning women. But when LGBTQ+ rights are eroding and trans people are subjected to hate crimes and media vitriol, it’s important to consider how our gender performance affects our attitudes toward this issue offstage. Whether we’re mocking or celebrating makes all the difference, and with such huge and avid audiences, pantos have the power to sway people’s prejudices. But the new breed of ladies seem more determined to make us laugh with their characters, not their negative stereotypes, which helps make panto season the most wonderful time of the year.
Mother Goose is at Hackney Empire, London until 31 December. Goldilocks and the Three Bears is at the Richmond Theater until December 31. Cracked is at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London until January 6