International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

complex theatrical phenomenon which persists in its ambiguities to the present day. On
the one hand, pantomimes became specifically associated with Christmas, and closely
rooted in local communities for whom they were specially written. As Christmas
entertainments they naturally became established as performances for children. On the
other hand, the parallel and similar form of the ‘burlesque’ was emphatically not for
children, but unavoidably affected pantomime conventions. There were also complaints
that inappropriate and vulgar material was spilling over into pantomime from the newly
flourishing music halls, as this nineteenth century commentator confirms:

We may say of present day pantomime that the trail of the music hall is over it all...

The objection to music hall artists on the stage is...that they have the effect of

familiarising general audiences, and children especially, with a style and kind of

singing, dancing and business which, however it may be relished by a certain class

of the population, ought steadily to be confined to its original habitat.

Mander and Mitchenson 1973:35

Over a hundred years later, pantomime is still for many children the main or only family
experience of theatre, but it habitually displays the same uncomfortable blend of fairy
tale, burlesque and risqué music hall turns. In this way children’s theatre becomes the
pretext for variety acts, replete with innuendo, aimed at grown-ups. In the USA,
pantomime enjoyed brief popularity but disappeared at the turn of the century, having
performed the useful service of establishing a base for children’s theatre. In Britain it
persisted, providing incentive, partly by adverse reaction, towards new experiments in
theatre for children. Bernard Shaw, in an article ‘Grimaldi is dead, why not bury him?’
in The Era (30 December 1937), observed: ‘Peter Pan was an attempt to get Christmas
pieces out of their groove. Androcles and the Lion was another.’

Peter Pan and After

In his study, Fifty Years of ‘Peter Pan’ (1954), Roger Lancelyn Green describes Barrie’s
masterpiece as ‘really the first absolutely straight play for children—and assuredly the
best and most popular’ (1–2). First produced in 1904 in London, and the following year
in New York, it achieved annual Christmas revivals for half a century, and in its original
or adapted forms continues to be widely popular. Disney’s cartoon version (1953), and
more recently Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991), have brought versions of the tale to a
wider audience. Spielberg has acknowledged his fascination with the story, and I would
argue that his blockbuster film E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial (1984), even more than Hook,
embodies a powerful indirect reworking of the story. Not for nothing is the mother in ET
heard reading Peter Pan aloud to the youngest child at a crucial moment in the film.
Peter Pan survives in many forms, but the story we know best began life as a play,
being converted to prose narrative only later: the reverse of the process which produced
stage versions of Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1888) and A Little Princess
(1902), and of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908). From its beginnings
the most usual evolution of children’s theatre has been from novel or story into play or
film, a sequence which continues to the present day through film and television drama.

212 DRAMA