Why perform Ben Crocker's Snow White Pantomime Script...?
- ben60467
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
I wrote my Snow White pantomime script specifically for a large cast and one of the unique things about the story is that it will provide your company with seven ready made excellent parts for young performers. So, if you are wanting to encourage opportunities for children, the Snow White panto script is your go to choice!
Of course, this year, with the focus on the new Disney film, it’s likely to be especially popular and the high recognition factor with audiences should have a good effect at the box office.
But maybe even more important than Disney’s multimillion dollar new film, Snow White features my favourite Dame’s prop – her dog, Fang.
Bought by Dame Dolly Dumpling as a birthday present for Snow White, she can’t quite bear to give him up…
“I’ve had such a tussle with myself. Because I thought, Dolly, a dog’s not just for birthdays, is it? It’s for life… So, I’ve decided to keep him forever. Snow White’ll just have to get her own dog.”
Notionally a dog, Fang is simply a ball of fluffy fur on a long lead or string. In fact, he’s a direct steal from the superb actor, Nigel Hawthorne, who I assisted back in 1994, when he was directing and starring in The Clandestine Marriage. It was Nigel’s idea to equip one of the characters with an anarchic little dog.
It worked brilliantly – and it still works brilliantly. You can make Fang fly all over the place and have all sorts of fun with him. Gratifyingly, it’s his leap for the Wicked Queen’s jugular which saves the day in the finale.
And of course, the Wicked Queen Grimelza is a wonderful part, with two acolytes to fire off. The Spirit of the Mirror, Speak True, who on occasion speaks with all too unwelcome veracity - and Grimelza’s oily sidekick, Oswald. All three are great fun to play.
And whilst on the subject of Baddies, I have to mention the Wicked Woodsmen of the Wild Wood, Bogwort and Stinkwort. (In fact, they’re about as wicked as a pair of inoffensive three-year-olds.)
I love the way all panto Baddie Leaders (in this case, the Wicked Queen) entrust the most difficult, most dastardly tasks to the most thoroughly inept individuals they can find. Extreme incompetence is always funny, but even by the standards of panto, Grimelza really is scraping the bottom of the barrel in choosing Bogwort and Stinkwort!
Contrasting bad with good, I decided to write for two good fairies. Fairy Goodheart, who is a rather anxious student fairy and the much more confident Professor Wonderwings, her fairy supervisor. I always enjoy their exchanges in verse.
So, all in all, Snow White is a panto script with lots of characters and lots and lots of comedy – and at the heart of it all is one of the best Principal Girl parts in the panto canon, Snow White herself.
Central to the story, she interacts with all the characters, in moments of comedy, romance, high peril and disaster.
But as always, there is, of course, a happy ending!