TAKING your precious darlings to a form of entertainment more usually attended by the working classes? Here’s how to explain what the hell is going on:
‘The principal boy can identify however she pleases’
Yes, you’re right that the principal boy appears to be a girl who is having a romance with the principal girl who is actually a girl. But, as you know, we’re fully supportive of people identifying wherever they choose on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Apart from you, because Mummy has already planned the very traditional church white wedding you’ll be having in 15 years’ time.
‘It isn’t nice to call people ugly’
We never say people’s faces are ugly, do we? It’s very mean, so we’ll ignore what the sisters look like and say they’re ugly on the inside. Mummy never criticises anyone’s appearance, apart from Katie Price, Sharon from EastEnders, Nikki from the school gates, Daddy’s first wife and anyone who uses lip fillers. They’re not organic, darling.
‘Breaking the fourth wall is a Brechtian technique’
Brecht popularised the technique of breaking the fourth wall, as you know from your prep school performance of The Good Person of Szechwan. Yes, it’s true that a meditative soliloquy on the nature of morality isn’t the same as a council estate boy called Jaxxon sitting next to you yelling ‘He’s behind you!’ but think of pantomime as a kind of naïve folk art, like granny’s collection of African tribal masks.
‘Shakespeare used innuendo too’
Yes, daddy did snigger a lot when Widow Twankey said ‘The Prince’s balls get bigger every year’. I know you didn’t understand it, but all you need to know is that it’s a special kind of joke for grown-ups that the world’s finest writer William Shakespeare used a lot. And also that Daddy is an infantile idiot and Mummy could have done a lot better.
‘No, I don’t know who Paul Chuckle is either, darling’
This pantomime was billed as having a host of celebrities starring in it, but I must admit I’ve never heard of them. Perhaps Paul Chuckle is better known for his work at the National? Maybe Wolf from Gladiators is a cutting edge performance artist? Anyway, whoever Lisa Scott-Lee is, I’d rather she showed a bit less cleavage as fairy godmother because your father seems to be unable to stop staring.
