Historian Liz Davies on the origins of panto in St Neots

Pantomime season is here! The long-standing tradition of watching a pantomime in the weeks around Christmas is said to have developed from celebrations held during January when people celebrated and ate up their meat and dairy produce before Shrove Tuesday in preparation for fasting during Lent.

Modern day pantomimes have their roots in the troupes of Italian actors and actresses of the ‘Commedia dell’Arte’ who were performing across Europe by the 1500s.

During this period, their performances were set to music but used no speech, hence the ‘mime’ of pantomime, and had a cast of stock characters including, Harlequin, Pierrot, Punch and Columbine.

The popularity of pantomime grew over the centuries and during the Georgian period in England (and across Huntingdonshire) a folk tradition grew up where groups of local men known as ‘Mummers’ would perform in large houses and pubs where they would be treated to food and drink and would be able to collect small sums of money from the audience.

This was a welcome perk when there was less work for agricultural labourers in the winter months. The plays they presented was usually based on the story of George and the Dragon and included characters such as St George or King George, the Doctor, the Turkish Knight and Beelzebub (the Devil).

Traditionally two characters would fight and the Doctor would revive the injured party, there might also be singing and dancing, with all the spoken dialogue passed on orally down the decades. In the Peterborough Advertiser of 1902, local man, George Thompson recalled the beginning of the play:

King George enters and says –

In comes I – King George the champion bold,

With my bright spear and bloody sword,

I won three crowns of Gold,

I fought a fiery Dragon,

I brought him to the slaughter,

And by that means I won,

The King of Egypt’s Daughter

During the early Victorian period (1843) the Theatres' Act was passed by parliament. This new Act allowed all types of spoken dialogue in theatres for the first time and very quickly new pantomimes and stage plays began to appear across Victorian Britain, with the scripts of new versions of pantomimes widely available by the 1860s.

During the First World War, a St Neots group calling themselves the Green Crackers, put on the pantomimes Puss in Boots and Dick Whittington to raise money for the local Nursing Association who were caring for injured soldiers.

In 1921, calling themselves The St Neots Amateur Pantomime Co. they staged their final pantomime Aladdin or New Lamps for Old on the St Neots Pavilion cinema stage.

Dorothy Wrycrof played the part of Widow Twankay. (Image: St Neots Museum)

The St Neots Advertiser called Aladdin, ‘a really delightful spectacle’ organised by Miss Daisy Maddison and Miss Dorothy Wrycroft. Miss Wrycroft played the part of Widow Twankay (created in 1861 by Victorian playwright H.J. Byron).

A performance of Aladdin at the St Neots Pavilion in 1921, image was drawn by Dorothy Wrycroft. (Image: St Neots Museum)

The local paper reported that her 'chess board skirt, was a real 'gem' and her white cotton stockings formed a prominent feature of the landscape.’

We can catch a glimpse of the performance in an old scrapbook now in the collection of St Neots Museum where Dorothy Wrycroft, a talented artist, drew illustrations of the play she had helped to create.

Although, this year, the St Neots Priory Centre is closed for refurbishment, the local St Neots Players performed their Christmas pantomime Trouble in Pantoland in smaller venues across our area.