Panto – or pantomime to give it its full name – is a peculiarly quirky British form of family entertainment. Traditionally put on around the Holiday season/New Year, pantos are largely based on any number of fairy tales. The most popular are Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack & the Beanstalk and Peter Pan.

The principle audience for any panto is families with children and involves lots of audience participation – prompted shouting, community singing, inviting audience on to stage etc. But there is plenty for the parents and grandparents with skits, topical jokes and plenty of thigh slapping!

Every panto production is different with great scope for improvisation and ad lib. However, there are a number of traditions common to all shows. Principle amongst these are: 

• Lots and lots of audience participation
• Pantomime Dame main comic character/s played by strapping male/s (The Queen is back!)
• Principle Boy, usually played by a young woman and looking mighty fine!
• Nasty villain or villains (Come and boo the Wolf and the Sheriff!)
• The audiences’ friend and chief “cheerleader’ (Muppet the Dog and Tiddles the Cat this time)
• Popular or well-known “pop” songs sometimes with changed words (Watch out for La Vida LOca and Ballroom Blitz)
• Community audience singing & dancing (Call me Maybe - obviously!)
• Comedy duo, slapstick routines, throwing candy and lots, lots more…

In 2009 we introduced panto to New England with our production of Cinderella. We followed that in 2010 with Jack & the Beanstalk and The Little Mermaid in 2012. All three were great successes and fabulous fun for cast and audience alike. So come and see our next production, Little Red Robin Hood...click for details