Pantomime, shortened to panto, evolved out of the renaissance commedia dell’arte tradition, and while contemporary panto has broken away from harlequinade to remixed fairy tales referencing pop-culture, I felt the spirit of craft guilds and village players walking into Art Court Theatre at Sacramento City College for “The Nutcracker, A Panto” on Nov. 28.
Panto is a British holiday tradition. This is a fact Fritz, Clara’s brother played by Josh Laquian, offered to the audience during the opening of the performance; notable to me because the campy charm of pantomime feels distinctly and enjoyably British as the idea of “Merrie England” floating about the public imagination. The same way “Merrie England” gained new energy from renaissance fairs in cities across America, “The Nutcracker, A Panto” at City Theatre felt in best comedic form with its localizations.
Characters in the panto recognizable to Sacramento locals included Midtown Coffee, Davis Tea, Elk Grove Chocolate, and the North and South Tahoe Snowflakes. Each performed their own “I am” song — set to popular music, as is the form in panto — that invited the audience to laugh knowing they’re in on the same joke. Midtown Coffee, a beanie wearing hipster personalization of the neighborhood, sang a character song set to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” lyrically gesturing toward the vibrant arts and cultural scene of Midtown.
Pop culture references throughout the show weren’t limited to music. A 6-7 joke received lots of unexpected laughter, and references to both “Barbie in the Nutcracker” (2001) and “Barbie” (2023) introduced what became a foil to the Mouse King. But there was something uniquely fun in trying to place how you know the song being parodied before it ended.
The show inspired an openness to experience. Breaks between musical performances rely on audience participation, which, starting out, gave me the impression I missed a cue — “balls” being a well met response to “what’s good about panto?” left me particularly stumped — but goes on with a natural enough rhythm by the time mid-performance Fritz said we were a good audience, I believed it too.
The interactive nature of panto made the experience engaging for every age group. Adults laughed at the inserted philosophy discussion despite foreseeing the set up for Descartes to be the cart before the horse and regardless of “Candy” — a recurring segment where cast members threw candy from pockets and saddlebags and baskets into the audience — being for the children, by the third time everyone was equally keen on strawberry hard candy strewn by the fistfuls.
Each winter, families across America fill opera house theaters for their local ballet’s rendition set to the familiar Tchaikovsky score, each with inevitable variation. Sometimes Clara is played by a woman who dances en pointe, more typically she’s played by a child who doesn’t. Sometimes the Sugarplum Fairy doesn’t dance a pas de deux. Costumes tend to vary on a scale of holiday to historical, and even the setting itself changes from America to Britain or Germany depending on the production. From every version of the Nutcracker I’ve seen, I never saw plastic balls thrown from crowd to stage to fend off the mice, until I saw “The Nutcracker, A Panto.”
City Theatre ran “The Nutcracker, A Panto” from Nov. 21 – Dec. 14.
