I took someone who had never seen panto before--who had no idea what they were doing--which is I think pretty much the ideal way to interrogate one's own reason for going to something like this. I mean I'm literally a theatre historian; this is one of the last living nineteenth-century forms, and I'm sort of professionally required to go to things like this. My friend lasted 'til interval; I had a really fantastic time all the way through. It was great watching professionals who were completely committed to fucking around on stage do so. Plus everything was (to my admittedly sort of middle-of-the-road judgment) completely, laudably progressive: Sleeping Beauty is revived by a kiss from the dame, then straps it on and rescues her prince; there's a sweet dragon-on-magical-fairy-type romance. As a unit of this kind of entertainment, it was entirely satisfying.
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