I, An American, Saw My First Panto, And Here Are My Questions
Oh, yes, I do.
Why is it called a pantomime?
Preface: I am American. I am an American who studied theatre at an American university, so to me pantomime is the wordless action, and there was 0% wordless action in the Hackney Empire's joyous (and very loud and very musical) Jack and the Beanstalk. I get the Roman theatre history aspect (I STUDIED THEATRE REMEMBER), but facts are facts and calling it a pantomime is just not an accurate depiction of what it actually is. Sorry.
Why is panto a Christmas thing?
Like 99% of the stories that pantos are based on (going off the advertisements I've seen for panto on the tube) are not Christmas stories, so pray tell, why have my childhood favourites been forced into snowy ice worlds? Peter Pan? Not a Christmas story folks. Snow White is her name, not the season the story takes place in, and don't even get me started on Aladdin.
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Do you have to pay more for seats in the sweet-toss line of fire?
I would just like to take a second to grumble about being sat in the stalls and still not getting a sweet OR a cool rubber ball toy when they were tossed into the audience. To be fair, I also narrowly missed being soaked with a water gun, so my seat's lack of proximity to the action wasn't a total bust.
Doesn't shouting at the stage make it hard to hear what's actually going on?
I've always been an old lady when it comes to noise in theatre, so you can imagine I have the same question about The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which is like, basically a Halloween panto, right?).