I hope you and Aeron had a lovely Christmas!

I laughed so loud about the dreamgirls reference 😅

"Mother Geese" cracked me right up.

The I Am Changing joke made me laugh way more than it probably should have 😂😂

2.02 "I'm not sure what this is?" I believe that the neon artwork outside the Lyric Hammersmith is based on the design of decorative plasterwork found in the auditorium. I always enjoy the reaction of people entering the venue for the first time, who having climbed up the stairs a couple of floors above a 1970s concrete shopping centre, suddenly find themselves in a Victorian Frank Matcham theatre!

Watching this and hearing you talk about the community of the Marlowe panto is the first time I’ve felt homesick since moving to Ireland six months ago. So sad I’m not going to get to see it this year, but I’m also so pleased that you absolutely loved it again.

I'm actually thinking Barbie will end up with its own a stage musical adoption at some point in the future.

Yes! I've heard Antihero at Snow White at the Greenwich theatre. It was my first ever panto and I took my US family to enjoy it with :) definitely a new theatre tradition has been born for me!

I went to Crawley to see Carrie Hope Fletcher in Sleeping beauty. I'm from the Netherlands and it was my first panto. I had so much fun, kind of sad we don't get them here. Guess I just have to go back next year haha

im going to london on the first! im so excited! We're going to see mousetrap and peter pan goes wrong!

1) the white hot chocolate from costa is amazing 2) we went to see the panto in bolton albert halls this year and watched cinderella and there was a barbie song for the wedding party, a justin bieber number. we had janice battersby out of corrie as the fairy superior and a great buttons with Rollo and the ugly sisters were hilarious Garnon Davies and Gareth Mitchell. I think I loved it more than the kids 😂

i saw jack and the beanstalk last year in middlesbrough and jack sang step one from kinky boots! I WAS GAGGED. love that pantos are using kinky boots!

I swear to you I saw the Cinderella poster in the tube and my immediate thought was- Good Lord, Mickey can't get away from it.

Charming video. The candy cane glasses were fun. And thank you for the panto lessons. 🎄 🙂

I set this challenge to myself too but the most I've done is 2. Cinderella at Contact Theatre Manchester did Dance the night away too Another trope fir Bingo is 'it's behind you' bit you did mention the 'sing it again part', dame, local references, sometimes a hi-vis scene, gender swap character (other than dame).

Ah I love Canterbury and the Marlowe panto! It’s fairly close to me so I go every year. It’s became a bit of a tradition and now couldn’t imagine not going! Ben really is the best panto dame going

Been to 3 pantos on my own this year. Nottingham, Hull and Sheffield 😊 love everything about them

Firstly as a lover of all things white chocolate this is the content I'm here for. Even this not being a "challenge video" I do love we had a bit of travel chaos thrown in for good measure. Overall looks like a very fun day indeed & something I'd do myself if I were over there.

I sometimes work in Stratford, so the whole time you were walking around, I was like "I know that, that's on my walk into work". I have passed the theatre you went to many times on my way to work!

Great video Mickey! Hope you and Aeron had a great Chirstmas. Canterbury is lovely, i work there sometimes!

I went to see snow white at my local king theatre and it was amazing and very funny and hope you have a great new year

You are a fair braver person than me! I am not a fan of panto, but did have a lovely two show day at The Lowry on Friday seeing Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World and Life Of Pi! 😀

I have the great privalige to work stage door in a theatre so get to experience a panto for the whole month It's my favourite time of year to be working

It's been a long time since the last professional panto I ever saw. Are you remember seeing Peter Pan, more than once as a child and distinctly remember one of them having Richard Whitely Asda headline star. That's how long ago it was!

So far have seen Cinderella at Bradford Alhambra and Hull New Theatre, Jack and the Beanstalk at Manchester Opera House and Snow White at the Carriageworks Leeds. And in the next few day hope to see Beauty and the Beast at Bridlington Spa and Sheffield Lyceum, Robinson Crusoe at YorK Grand Opera House and another Jack and the Beanstalk at the Theatre Royal York.

Thank you. Appreciate you walking non-UK people through what a panto is. Questions: Are pantos performed all through December or a shorter time period? Are they in mostly smaller theaters? Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Happy New Year!

One of the high points of my London trip….the duck sandwich at pret…not available in the states

I love pantos I generally try and see 3 one where I live in Malvern annually on my last day of term as an end of term treat! Then I’ve seen Jack & the Beanstalk in Manchester and Beauty & the Beast in Mansfield 🤣 also I do love going on the last day to the last show, as I feel the actors just have so much fun ☹️🎭🥳

Hope you and Aeron had a Merry Christmas. Aladdin looked like a blast. Have you seen Rob Madge as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan panto?

You’ve got to come to Aylesbury. The panto is insane… mass auditorium waterfight every year. It’s just fantastic.

There are a few theatres in the US that do UK-style pantos. I keep wanting to go to The Panto Project in NYC, but it always closes about a week before Christmas, and I never get my schedule to work. That one looks like it's really disability-inclusive, and it also uses a lot of local references -- it's held at the Henry Street Settlement, which is a community center founded in the early twentieth century, in a neighborhood that's traditionally been one of the first places for new immigrants to live. (There was also a whole thing last year when a school in the US took the kids to see a local panto, which they'd always done in the past with no issues. But that year, one of the kids came home and (not knowing another word for it) told their mother that there was a drag queen in the play. And the mother, rather than doing the sensible thing and calling the teacher to ask what that was about, contacted a bunch of conservative media instead, and it became a whole ridiculous media thing.)

As an American who has watched British TV/movies since childhood, I didn't find out about the existence of panto until I was almost forty. It was like the great missing key to understand a huge number of references and influence in British media. But it's so ubiquitous no one even talks about it. For example, in the show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, they had a habit of doing episodes where the main actors played various doppelgangers. Michael Hurst, a New Zealand actor, appeared in several episodes as the Widow Twanky. It was twenty years later when I realized that was not just a drag character he had created. Or--The Play That Goes Wrong and its various iterations. It's obvious to me now that some of the jokes are riffing off of standard panto audience call outs--but it's not like those are a thing here. At the production I saw, they must have had an audience plant to make the joke work. Even now, I have a hard time understanding what panto is--very little of it is recorded (for obvious reasons). The only panto I've ever seen is the Dick Whittington done by the National Theatre during COVID, which they put up on NT at Home. And the reviews of that called it pretty poor, including that social distancing meant there wasn't much of an audience and very little audience interaction. I think the only way I could actually understand panto is to be in the UK around Christmas time. There just isn't anything remotely equivalent over here.

How does mickey joe stay so thin eating cookies cake and bacon?

I was at the Glasgow pavilion pantomime treasure island. Our musical theatre moment was poor pirates from SpongeBob musical... niche but I liked it

Why didn’t you go to Wimbledon or somewhere easier to get to for panto 3 ahaha? This looks so fun and I might do it next year!

Will you be doing a video on curves Evita (loved the school children stealing the show in the opening)

I have seen 5 Pantomimes this year lol

Go to the Belgrade theater Coventry pantomime u won’t be disappointed

You should go see the Snow White panto at Greenwich Theatre. It’s brilliant!

I assume Seattle's local panto will have at least a billion Barbie references (seeing it last weekend Jan 7). What is panto if not topical?

Go to see Alison Hammond to at the Birmingham Hippodrome

You should try some indie bakeries, the costa/nero/pret/starbucks seems like a pipeline of food that was manufactured 6 months ago in a chinese factory. Nothing fresh whatsoever

As an American who doesn’t get Panto. My question is. WHY

So Pantomime is like musical children’s theater with some interactive elements?

A statue of Chaucer with a QR scan code. Ancient vs Modern, very odd.

I am first. So good

My question about pantomime is pretty basic: Can you tell us, relatively briefly, what defines a performance as "pantomime"? In the US, I think most of us hear "pantomime" and associate it with Mime performers such as Marcel Marceau; obviously nothing like these shows.

Hi how are you doing

Peter Pan Jacob Elliott technical manager

pantomime's dame trope is transmisogynistic and outdated. it doesn't matter if its played in the more 'drag' way which has its own problems or the more masculine way. It doesn't matter if audiences read into it or not, its still literally overt transmisogyny. But wouldn't expect anything different from terf island

It's been a long time since the last professional panto I ever saw. Are you remember seeing Peter Pan, more than once as a child and distinctly remember one of them having Richard Whitely Asda headline star. That's how long ago it was!