Photostory #405: Growing in Popularity Across Canada: English-Style Pantomimes for Christmas. In Fredericton, New Brunswick, it's going to be "Aladdin"

Photographers
Bob Bridge , Ted Grant
Maker
National Film Board of Canada
Release Date
December 14, 1965
Collection
CMCP fonds
Credit Line
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives
Main Text
Christmas cheer for many Canadians this year can include a savoury slice of traditional English-style pantomime - which is just about as unlike the legitimate art of silent mime as can be imagined. For the lusty English pantomimes, with such innocent titles as Bo-Peep, Mother Goose, Jack and the Beanstalk, Treasure Island and Peter Pan, which draw massive crowds in London and other big cities, not only bring alive the magical world of make-believe fairy tales to wide-eyed children but also put on a rip-roaring, often raucous, medley of farces, skits, leg shows and crazy, mixed-up situations in such rapid succession that both juvenile and adult audiences are swept along by gale force winds of hilarious laughter across oceans of zestful entertainment. Through these pantomimes runs the golden thread of the particular story spiced with popular music, chorus girls a-dancing and a special brand of tenderness and drama which invariably features a sweet, gentle heroine, a prince-charming-type hero (also played by a well-formed girl), various wicked witches (played by men) and other comical characters who turn their roles as vicious pirates and kidnappers into side-splitting figures of fun. As with the big London productions, New Brunswick's Playhouse Theatre, Fredericton, is opening its own pantomime, Aladdin, directly after the Christmas holiday. Here, there will be a rousing pantomime version of what happens when the handsome, long-legged Aladdin rubs the magic lamp, meets the famed Widow Twankey and then gets madly involved with other incredible characters in a world of fantasy set to a magical Chinese background.