Time for Women with Talent to Take Back Older Female Roles in Pantos

[SpringTimeIsRingTime]

Panto Dames have been a thing since 1806 when a certain Mr Simmons decided to play Mother Goose as a Witch (how original) rather than as a caring grandmother figure. Nowadays panto dames are mainly played by gay men in drag.

I think it's time for talented actresses to take back elder female roles from the tired tropes played by men since the Victorian era.

I absolutely would not want to see any of those as a panto dame. It would not work in remotely the same way

In fact, I'd say with someone like Miranda (who's tv show made a lot of jokes about her being mannish) it would actually be more offensive

No-one's saying get rid of panto - just allow actresses a chance to play female roles such as the Dame Panto or the Ugly Sisters.
Some women are already breaking in - no actress should be ruled out of playing a panto dame just because she's a woman. That's uber-ridiculous.

Same here! Always my favourite character!

Write one then. 🙂

In fact it's quite telling that almost all those you list are "fat" and even slightly "manly" female comedians

I wish I could but there are a lot of very talented women would be better at it than me.

The … doesn’t negate earlier and other examples I made re: roles of older complex women being taken by men.

Panto Dames aren't women-hating either. Everybody is laughing at the silly man in a dress.

Oh stop with your misogyny - they're extremely talented comedians who can bring a lot more skill to the role than the average mediocre male drag artist.

And BTW, there are places now electing to having women play the Ugly Sisters (Kerry Katona and Katie Price did at one point)

The point is Miss Hannigan is a poor example because she is far more often played by a woman, with a few exceptions like CRH

The problem is that clearly the dame, for better or worse, is the draw for a lot of people.

If pantos changed fully to have women play the dame, would audiences still be as large? Hopefully yes...?

Oh YES it is!!

Hardly any pantos have a principal boy anymore. They should bring that back.

I have tried to explain myself and you still believe you know better.
in any event, mentioning musicals with female lead roles is only the tip of the iceberg which if you work in theatre, you would know. The numbers of production roles filled by women in musical theatre and straight theatre are really bad, all of which can be evidenced by recent statistics.
musical theatre may be doing ok but straight drama, both London based and regional are in real trouble. That was the point I was making which for some reason annoyed you.

You don't go the ballet much, do you?

So why didn't you suggest someone like Sophie Wilan or Aisling Bea or Katherine Ryan or even Mel Giedrych?

There's something very similar about most of the women you suggested and the misogyny lies in you suggesting them playing a traditionally male role...

The Nutcracker is still performed with the ethnically incorrect Arabian and Chinese dances by some companies. Because I have actually seen that. Yes.

No-one's saying get rid of panto - just allow actresses a chance to play female roles such as the Dame Panto or the Ugly Sisters.

I think it would risk turning an otherwise good-humoured production into something quite nasty and awkward if you had an older woman playing an ugly sister - inviting the audience to laugh at how ugly she is. I can't think many actresses would truly want that part either, when it isn't about the actor skilfully portraying a villainous and wicked character: it's primarily physical-driven absurd humour.

It's not high art. The idea is that everybody laughs a lot at the people playing the ugly, grotesque sisters - and the actors play up to it, usually with lots of pathetically deluded and ridiculous lines and ad libs about how amazingly pretty they're convinced that they are; because they are clearly men and thus they are naturally going to be ugly/unattractive 'women'. Cinderella is a beautiful woman contrasted against two ugly 'women'. It would take a really unpleasant turn if you were inviting everybody to physically compare like with like: i.e. three actual women, one of whom is a beautiful woman and the other two are as ugly as she is beautiful.

Hmmm, one female and seven men? Are all the men... on the short side?!

😂

Actresses won’t care. They are playing a character the audience is responding to. It’s the character who is ugly, not them.

Is yellowface used? I've never seen that. Shocking ...

I’m in an am dram group and I can guarantee that if we did Cinderella as a panto, the ugly sisters would be the most auditioned for roles! Fun and silly roles like that are always more popular than the boring parts (like Cinderella herself). Men and women would go for it, and because we have more women than men in our group they would probably be played by women. Probably women who are very attractive in real life. Their ugliness contrasted with Cinderella’s beauty would be portrayed by costume, posture, voice, mannerisms etc.

I’ve seen Cinderella performed by another am dram group with 2 women as the ugly sisters and they were fantastic. One in particular was a stand out performance. Not once did I think “this would be better if they were men”.

That sounds good. The Ugly Sisters could be given outlandish makeup etc, as you say