Among the ingredients of the British holiday season is a traditional pantomime, this year's offerings featuring four versions of the story of Aladdin from the Thousand and One Nights, writes David Tresilian in London Among the byways of British theatre rarely sampled by foreign audiences otherwise willing to sit through the classical repertoire put on by the large national companies or the latest West End shows is the less prestigious, vernacular tradition of pantomime, a staple of British Christmas entertainment. This year's offerings, featuring professional productions of the traditional stories of Cinderella, Dick Whittington and Jack and the Beanstalk among others, together with countless amateur and provincial shows, features no fewer than four London outings for Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp, loosely based on the well- known tale from the Thousand and One Nights (the Arabian Nights ). While the story of Aladdin (Alaaeddin), the Baghdad tailor's son whose love for the beautiful daughter of the Sultan ends in an unlikely marriage courtesy of help from the Genie of the Lamp, has been transformed into slapstick comedy in British pantomime, the main lines of the story survive. The fact that they do so, and the story's enduring presence on the London stage, making it the most popular of all British pantomimes, says something both about the European reception of the Arabian Nights and their continuing presence as a source of characters, magical events and even images and catchphrases. These include the lamp itself and flying carpet in the story of Aladdin and the phrase "open sesame", a version of iftah ya sim-sim, taken from the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, another pantomime favourite. Of the four productions of Aladdin on stage this year, two in particular show off the special appeal of pantomime. The first of these at the prestigious Old Vic theatre, well-known for a string of legendary performances among them Peggy Ashcroft in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra in 1932, Alec Guinness in Hamlet in 1938 and Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith in Othello in 1964, features Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey, in pantomime the mother of Aladdin. McKellen is best known in Britain for his performances of Shakespeare, though internationally he has reached a larger audience for playing Gandalf in the recent film versions of the Lord of the Rings. The second, at the Richmond Theatre, includes Simon Callow, familiar to cinema-goers from the 1994 British film Four Weddings and a Funeral, as the wicked magician Abanazar, described in the original Arabian Nights tale as arriving in Baghdad from Africa and variously figured in British pantomime as Egyptian or Moroccan, as well as local stars from television soap and stand- up comedy. Both productions are described as genuinely traditional pantomimes, the Old Vic putting on a particularly enjoyable show that draws upon all the standard devices. Some of these will be readily appreciated by almost any audience and include the familiar interaction of actor and audience, such as the "Hello boys and girls!" shouted out by Aladdin on his first and subsequent entrances, well delivered here by Neil McDermott as a notably athletic Aladdin, and the just as familiar "behind you!" shouted out by the audience in this production when Widow Twankey, Aladdin and sidekick Dim Sum wait at a "haunted bus stop" and are comically unaware of a ghostly presence looming behind their backs. Other features, however, will be less explicable: how to explain, for example, how Aladdin's mother, a Baghdad tailor's widow in the Arabian Nights, has become Widow Twankey, proprietor of a Chinese laundry, in pantomime, or that the action itself has been transported from Baghdad to Peking? Yet by far the greatest obstacle to the enjoyment of pantomime for those not used to it is likely to be the humour itself, drawing on references sometimes obscure even to those otherwise familiar with the British scene and on double entendres presumably scarcely decipherable to the children that make up much of a typical pantomime's audience. In addition, while the narrative line of a typical production of Aladdin consists of a pared-down version of the Arabian Nights tale, itself likely to have been added to through improvisation and incorporated episodes before reaching final written form, much of an individual show's appeal will lie in additional song-and-dance material and the lavish application of familiar routines and jokes. Many of these focus on the figure of Widow Twankey herself (the "pantomime dame"), as well as on the almost obligatory pair of Chinese policemen, beautifully rendered in the Old Vic production, forlorn Chinese emperor, always down on his luck, and twin brother of Aladdin introduced to support comic laundry routines. The Old Vic show includes original musical material supplied by British popular singer Elton John, for example, and it has a notably fine Genie of the Lamp, hovering menacingly following Aladdin's discovery of the magic lamp in the cave in which the African magician Abanazar, masquerading as his wicked uncle, has imprisoned him. The Richmond production, playing perhaps to the susceptibilities of its more suburban audience, features extensive improvisation and audience banter from its Widow Twankey, British television actor Christopher Biggins. All this testifies to the peculiarly syncretic character of pantomime. In the case of Aladdin, this involves taking a tale from the Arabian Nights, introducing stock characters from vernacular tradition and traditional comedy, such as the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, and larding the whole with contemporary humour and routines. Performances tend to be judged on how well they accord with received notions of each part, both McKellen and Biggins relishing a familiar routine in which children in the audience are invited to shout out should anyone approach the lamp, set high on the laundry walls, when Widow Twankey's back is turned. The Old Vic version also has a particularly good comic song sung by the emperor in what is described as Chinese with help from the audience in the chorus. Standard histories of British pantomime emphasise the origins of Aladdin in the translation of the Arabian Nights into French by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 1717, the French versions passing into English and a pantomime version of Aladdin appearing at the end of the century at Covent Garden in London. By 1813, Aladdin's status as an oriental tale freely mixing Chinese and Arab elements had become established in the minds of London audiences, Aladdin's mother now appearing as "Ching Mustapha". Most of the elements in today's story had appeared by 1861 when "Widow Twankey" appeared for the first time, apparently named after a popular brand of tea. From here it was only a short distance to go before Aladdin's mother began to steal the show, as she does in contemporary productions, with the love between Aladdin and the princess Badroubaldor, daughter of the emperor, also being overshadowed by the plotting of Aladdin's supposed uncle in his attempts at gaining the lamp. While this process of mixing and matching different elements to meet the demands of changing audiences, a sort of down-market bricolage, is a familiar part of pantomime and might be thought to show scant respect for the original story, Galland's French translation of Aladdin, from which subsequent versions derive, is itself not all that it might seem. According to Robert Irwin in his Companion to the Arabian Nights, while the Arabic manuscripts from which Galland worked can be inspected for most of the tales, in the case of Aladdin and Ali Baba, among others, the original manuscript has never been found, raising "the possibility that the Arab version was actually based on Galland's French story". If this was indeed the case then the magpie character of pantomime is doubly underlined: not only did the romantic atmosphere and sundry bric-à-brac of this "oriental tale" seduce European 18th-century audiences, as they still do modern ones, but the tale itself was, like much else in European translations of the Arabian Nights, largely a European invention. Indeed, in Aladdin, European interest in all things oriental, freely larded with magic lamps, flying carpets and various kinds of turbaned genie ( jinn ), has mixed with a later vogue for chinoiserie to create a uniquely European product, though one of interest, too, to non-European audiences. Pantomime, as a genre, is remarkably promiscuous: casting its net wide in search of material it has landed Aladdin, Ali Baba, and, in the past, Sindbad from the Arabian Nights. However, almost any traditional material will do, even if this, originally, was little more than a nursery rhyme ( Babes in the Wood ), something dug up from mediaeval story-books ( Dick Whittington ), or a story retrieved from folk-memory by, for example, the Brothers Grimm in 19th- century Germany, and worked up into educational material for the children of the middle- classes ( Sleeping Beauty ). Material of this sort is always susceptible to hijack by Disney, turning a charming matinee outing into a global movie franchise. However, one of the finest qualities of the current London Old Vic production of Aladdin, aside from some outstanding performances, is its habit of placing the material in inverted commas, such that, as is suited for an ironic, modern age, one tends to watch " Aladdin " rather than Aladdin, "pantomime" more than pantomime. While self-consciousness of this sort can be overdone, here it successfully draws attention to the intriguing past history of the material and the genre, making this as much an adult show as it is one that appeals to children. Purists might consider the game-show badinage of the Richmond show to be closer to the spirit of traditional pantomime, but, as the above history shows, in pantomime where does the original material really end and the invention begin? Aladdin , with Sir Ian McKellen (Widow Twankey), Neil McDermott (Aladdin) & Roger Allam (Abanazar), The Old Vic, London, until 22 January; Aladdin , with Christopher Biggins (Widow Twankey), Henri Luxemburg (Aladdin) & Simon Callow (Abanazar), Richmond Theatre, London, until 22 January.
