There is nothing like a dame: cross-dressing has always been a feature of pantos, not only with pantomime dames, like south Londoner Gary Wilmot above, but including ‘Principal Boys’ played by actresses such as Caroline Parkes
CROYDON CHRONICLES: One of the great British traditions of this time of year is the family visit to the theatre, or to a church hall for the local am-dram performance, during pantomime season.
DAVID MORGAN traces the career of Caroline Parkes, the Victorian actor and director who did so much to establish the popularity of the panto
Rehearsals are underway. Songs are being learned. Lines are being memorised. Costumes being made.
It won’t be long before it is pantomime time.
“Oh no it isn’t!”
“Oh yes it is!”
Pantomime, as a staple Christmas family entertainment in the form we are familiar with today, has been attracting audiences since the middle of the 19th Century.
The cast of Beauty and the Beast at the Fairfield Halls will be honing their dance routines and polishing the timing of their jokes. Selsdon Baptist Church are welcoming the touring Saltmine Theatre Company who will be performing Cinderella om December 13, where the audience can discover the extraordinary power of kindness.
Top billing: Parkes’ Dick Whittington was the big draw in Croydon 150 years ago
The Stanley Halls in South Norwood is also hosting performances of Cinderella, with a 21st Century musical makeover (from December 13). And in January, The Sanderstead Dramatic Club will be putting on Aladdin.
In December 1875, the Theatre Royal in Croydon was getting ready to welcome Dick Whittington and his Wonderful Cat.
Starring as Dick and directing the show was Caroline Parkes. She was a familiar name and face to Croydon audiences, as she had starred in several shows and pantomimes at the Crystal Palace.
She was well-known as a performer on the West End stage, too, being described by one critic at one performance as “terpsichorean” (it meant she could dance).
Parkes was born in Islington in January 1838. Her first performance on the stage came, aged four, at Her Majesty’s Theatre as Bacchus in a ballet. She first appeared at Sadler’s Wells as Columbine in 1849, subsequently performing there many times.
In 1851, she appeared as Columbine again, this time at the Surrey Theatre on Blackfriars Road, near St George’s Circus, long since demolished.
She starred at the Marylebone Theatre many times, too. Her straight acting skills were tested when she played the part of Donalbain there in Macbeth in 1858.
Parkes danced “charmingly” in the 1861 Sadler’s Wells production of Rev James White’s tragedy Feudal Times.
As her career developed, she starred as a burlesque dancer and became a specialist pantomime performer. The first mention of a pantomime in which she appeared was Cock Robin at the Lyceum in 1867.
Two years later she was back at the Lyceum starring in Humpty Dumpty, a show described as “costing £2,000 to put on, rich in gas lights, colour, gilding and suspended ballet girls”. That would give the show a budget of more than £300,000 in today’s money. Parkes was the star of the opening scene.
She next appeared playing the lead in the wondrously named Little Dicky Dilver and his Stick of Silver (based on a nursery rhyme), with the panto written by a pair of writers who worked under the pen name of the Brothers Grinn (geddit?), with whom she was to go on to develop a close working relationship, performing their scripts on many occasions. This one was at the Princess’ Theatre in Oxford Street. Her 1872 appearance in a London pantomime was in Jack and the Beanstalk at the Adelphi.
Good reviews: how Punch reported Parkes’ part in the Crystal Palace panto in 1870
A Punch magazine review of the burlesque Black Eyed Susan, which starred Parkes and ran for more than 500 nights, described her as “graceful”. This was performed at the Royalty Theatre in Dean Street. She also appeared at Astley’s Theatre, at the southern end of Westminster Bridge, as Fortunio in Hush a Bye Baby on the Tree Top.
She was quite the Principal Boy. Originally called a “Breeches Role”, it became the pantomime tradition that a woman should play the part of the young male hero.
In a Victorian era where women, even on stage, were expected to be demure and wear skirts that covered all the way to their ankles, the Principal Boy would wear tights to show off their legs. Cross-dressing and gender role reversals have always been part of the pantomime tradition, with men playing the “dames”, such as Widow Twankey in Aladdin or the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, while the male lead was played by a woman.
As well as appearing in the West End, Parkes was also making appearances in south London. In 1870, she starred as Gulliver in The Voyages of Gulliver to Lilliput at the Crystal Palace. These spectacular shows had large casts:150 children were to play the Lilliputians, and the ballet corps numbered almost 100.
The Theatre Royal in Croydon operated under various names from its opening in 1868, until its eventual closure in 1956 when it was by then a Rank Organisation cinema. Located on Crown Hill, on Church Street right in the town centre, it could accommodate audiences of 1,500 people.
Town centre theatre: the Theatre Royal on Church Street, at Crown Hill, could accommodate audiences of 1,500
The script for the Croydon production of Dick Whittington was written by the Brothers Grinn, the professional name used by Edward Blanchard and Thomas Greenwood when they wrote together. Parkes’s husband, Charles Fenton, whom she’d met when both were appearing at Sadler’s Wells, was also part of the creative team who designed and made the scenery.
Fenton had been born into a theatre family. His father was the stage director of Edmund Kean, the famous Shakespearean actor. Charles appeared in several Shakespeare plays at Sadler’s Wells before turning his hand to pantomime appearances. He worked with his brother Frederick in the paint room at Sadler’s Wells, where Thomas Greenwood was the manager of the backstage department, before carrying out a similar role at the Adelphi in The Strand.
Palace of varieties: Parkes and her husband, Charles Fenton, were regulars, front and back-stage, in the shows produced at the Crystal Palace
Fenton also worked at Crystal Palace, too, designing and constructing sets.
In the second half of the 19th Century it was often the way that the writers would have an alternate title. Gilbert and Sullivan did this for their operettas, with the alternate name for The Mikado being The Town of Titipu.
The writers of Croydon’s 1875 production of Dick Whittington came up the most amazing alternate title: Dick Whittington and his Wonderful Cat or Harlequin Queen Butterfly and the Troublesome Rats of Morocco.
Would it have made the public more curious about the plot?
Although some West End pantomimes opened before Christmas, the tradition of most theatres at the time was to begin their pantomimes on Boxing Day. In 1875, Christmas Day fell on a Saturday, so Dick Whittington didn’t open until Monday December 27.
The crowds flocked in. Miss Caroline Parkes would have wowed them with her songs and her dances, the Great Silvani would have made the tears roll down the audiences’ cheeks as he performed his clown routines, Oscar Barrett would have conducted the band at a brisk rate and the ballet dancers, choreographed by M Espinosa, would have impressed.
Having a West End star certainly gave the Theatre Royal boost. It was testimony to the pulling power of Croydon venues in the Victorian age that they could afford someone of that calibre.
After her husband died, aged 56 in 1877, Parkes took up dance teaching. She still had a few more years on the stage, though, starring in Puss in Boots at the Alexandra Palace in 1881. Another of her later shows was Called Back at the Prince’s Theatre in 1884. She was living in Medina Road, Holloway, when she died in 1887, aged 49.
Whether you are going to watch a panto this year and you are booing and hissing along with the audience, or whether you are a performer ready to don some sequined outfits, give a thought for those who have blazed a trail over years gone by.
Caroline Parkes certainly played her part.
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- The casualties of war are not always killed on the battlefield
- The heretic bishop who recanted to avoid burning at the stake
- Wandle Park postcard begins trace of a Pitlake family’s history
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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