’Tis the season for panto. But, as a theatre critic and an inveterate literary snob, I have always hated the genre. So I was surprised to find my 2024 bookended by two evenings that showed me why panto brings so much joy. At one end of the year: London’s Jewish community centre, JW3. At the other: Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre. Both have their own takes on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
In 2023, the JW3 launched its first panto for the Jewish community, Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig. In 2024, the Liverpool Royal Court made a hit with The Scouse Red Riding Hood. Like most Great British Pantos, both are better understood as panto rather than pantomime—there’s very little of the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition in either of these. (Although Argentinian acrobat Tiago Fonseca, starring as Red Riding Hood’s ninja-skilled granny, gave JW3 a taste of high-skill clowning; sadly, he is not in this winter’s follow-up, Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah, on from 8th December.)
I caught Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig last winter, and The Scouse Red Riding Hood at the end of November. One of the reasons I’ve struggled with panto in the past, as someone who comes to theatre from a classically literary background, is that great panto experiences rarely evolve from a text. And while both these shows took inspiration from the tale of the little girl and the big bad wolf, as popularised by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, neither has more than the barest relationship with their forerunners.
Instead, the JW3 extravaganza explained why Red, and not her mother, was taking bread to grandmother’s house. Like any good Jewish family story, this was a tale featuring a mother and daughter who were not on speaking terms, and thoroughly enjoying the chance for a good broyges (spat). In Liverpool, by contrast, Red’s grandmother was highly sexed, costumed in the false teeth and hair of Cilla Black, and intimately familiar with the frustrations of shopping for leggings at Liverpool’s mammoth St Johns shopping centre.
Rather than responding to a text, great panto is built as a response to a place or community, as both these shows reminded me. Indeed, Kevin Fearon, the Royal Court’s executive producer and writer of The Scouse Red Riding Hood, tells me: “The story is the starting point, then we put a Scouse angle onto it.” Like the Jewish mothers of JW3, Lindzi Germain’s Scouse granny is worried about her granddaughter, Red, marrying outside the community—to Blue, an irredeemable Everton supporter. The maternal concern that runs through both of these shows demonstrates why Red Riding Hood is particularly suitable for community-based panto: like a great many fairy tales, it starts with a family.
Great panto is built as a response to a place or community
Fearon frames his show as an act of rebellion: “We’re revolting against the tradition of panto and we’re actively trying to be different.” There’s certainly plenty of anarchic energy in Scouse Red Riding Hood—and none of the tired costumes and sets that one sees recycled year after year by the big commercial panto companies. Much like at JW3, there are references to all the other cultural events that Liverpool’s Royal Court has hosted recently: the cast, as Fearon points out, “are names our audience will recognise from shows throughout the year”. The Court even has a bar in the centre of the stalls, which was serving prosecco and Amstel barely a metre from my seat.
Is any of this rebellious or radical? True, both shows take aim at corporate greed, with fat cat villains (or fat pigs, or fat wolves). Shaking a populist fist at the local rich is a longstanding pantomime tradition, as is airing one’s grievances against the local council. At the Lyric Hammersmith in London, where Sonia Jalaly is adapting Aladdin, there is now an annual jibe at the municipal failure to reopen Hammersmith Bridge. These are ritual complaints, and at times superficial—at first glance, these shows, and most entertainments like them, are still money-spinners focused on offering audiences a good time.
Nevertheless, what makes each of these productions political is their clear-eyed insistence on the worth and soul of their communities. In the best panto, there is local pride and the affectionate fostering of an identity. In their different ways, both JW3 and Liverpool’s Royal Court have helped me realise that this year.
