Transpontine Pantomime, today and past

The Pantomime season is upon us. At Greenwich Theatre, Peter Pan: A New Adventure by Andrew Pollard opened last week, and Peter Pan is also to be found at the Broadway Theatre in Catford this Christmas with The Lost Boy Peter Pan (not technically a pantomime): 'The Broadway’s Resident Theatre Company, the award-winning ACTION TO THE WORD bring their brand new twist on J M Barrie’s classic novel to stage this Christmas. With live music, singing and interactive theatre for children of all ages, this alternative to traditional Pantomime is the perfect treat'.

This year's Telegraph Hill Centre community panto is Mother Goose: 'Mother Goose rents her Brockley hovel from money-grabbing Squire Hatcham. Poor Mother Goose. She’s not young, good looking or well off. But Mother Goose is kind, loyal and a dedicated community activist. Oh yes, she is!' Most shows next weekend are sold out, but still a few tickets left for the Friday.

Transpontine Pantomime

Pantomime has a long association with South London, the phrase 'Transpontine pantomime' being used in the 19th century to refer to the shows on the Surrey side (i.e South side) of the Thames, in venues such as the Surrey Theatre in Blackfriars Road and the Vic at Waterloo. 

An 1867 article entitled 'THE TRANSPONTINE PANTOMIMES' noted that these theatres had become the main venues for Christmas panto: 'In the internecine war raging between pantomime and burlesque, the latter has decidedly the best of it this Christmas in the centre of London. Out of the dozen theatres in the heart of the metropolis, only two, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, have produced pantomimes. In the outlying districts, this time-honoured species of winter amusement is in full force, and notably in the three theatres on the Surrey side of the Thames—Astley's, the Surrey, and the Victoria' (Cheltenham Chronicle, 15 January 1867).  

A review of a pantomime at the Surrey in 1866 describes the ingredients: 

 'A sufficient stringing together of nursery rhymes, a little touch of fairy machinery, a lover and a princess, with a rival possessor of magic powers, while a benevolent fairy or an old woman and her cat agree to befriend true love, and in the end are successful, or, if not, bring all the parties into Fairyland, and there change them into harlequin, columbine, and clown, and you have a transpontine pantomime of the present day' (London Daily News, 27 December 1866) 

So familiar was the formula that the phrase 'transpontine pantomime' passed into the language as a metaphor for absurd and knockabout events. So a parade of Chinese soldiers in 1894 was described as thus: 'their drill and demeanour, were suggestive of a show of a transpontine pantomime. (Western Times, 31 October 1894). Similarly the humiliation of the Ashanti king during the British occupation of what is now Ghana was decribed as  'A scene more fit for a transpontine pantomime than one de-signed to impress a conquered foe with the idea of European dignity or British magnanimity' (Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 24 January 1896).

Maya Angelou in South London

So long Maya Angelou (1928-2014), who died today. The great African-American writer is featured in a mural on a wall by Brockley station, somewhat the worse for wear at the moment, with words from her poem 'Life don't frighten me at all':

'...Tough guys fight

All alone at night

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park

Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where

Boys all pull my hair

(Kissy little girls

With their hair in curls)

They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes

And listen for my scream,

If I'm afraid at all

It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve

I can walk the ocean floor

And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Not at all

Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

photo by Ben Sutherland

Her words also feature on the war memorial in Kennington Park,  in memory of over 100 people who were killed when a bomb landed on their shelter there in 1940: 'History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again'.

So yes, her words are woven into the urban fabric of London. But what of her visits here?  London certainly played a part in her life. She met one of her husbands, Paul Du Feu, at a party in London in 1972 (he had previously been briefly married to Germaine Greer). Another of her significant relationships was with Vusumzi Make, a South African activist with the Pan Africanist Congress who she met in 1961, and with whom she visited London in that year where he was attending a conference in London. in 'The Heart of a Woman', Angelou says that they stayed at 'a one-room apartment which the PAC kept near Finsbury Park' and that 'London air was damp, its stone buidings old and grey. Colorfully dressed African women on the streets reminded me of tropical birds appearing suddenly in a forest of black trees'.

She also performed on a number of occasions at the Lewisham Theatre, now the Broadway Theatre, in Catford and indeed became a patron of the theatre. The BFI database includes a 1987 Thames TV programme 'Maya Angelou in Performance', a 'Show featuring poet, author, dancer and university professor Maya Angelou from the Lewisham Theatre in South London. The best selling author filled a 1,000 seat theatre for a poetry recital'. I have also found a reference to her performing at Lewisham on April 30 1988. At his blog,  Stephe Meloy recalls seeing her there twice: 'I was blessed to have seen Maya perform her one woman show in Lewisham Theatre in Catford. On stage she was everything I dreamt she would be... The auditorium was packed full of adoring fans, inspired by her message of strength, valour, love and hope'. We also know that at some point in the 1980s she visited a feminist bookshop in New Cross - Bookplus was at 27 Lewisham Way (perhaps this visit coincided with one of her Lewisham appearances).

If anyone has any stories or memories of Maya Angelou in London, please comment.