Pantomime magic

Text 1: The Transformation Scene, by Henrietta Bligh

An original autobiography written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

I was seven when my uncle took me to the Christmas pantomime, and of all that long and noisy evening I remember only one thing clearly. Near the end the stage went dark, the orchestra began something low and sweet, and then, gauze by gauze, the gloomy cavern melted away and a garden of silver and rose rose in its place, with fairies hanging in the air above fountains that seemed to flow with light. A sigh went through the whole house. I gripped the velvet edge of the box and did not breathe.

Many years afterwards, a gentleman who had worked behind the scenes at that theatre explained to me how it was done: the painted cloths, the gas battens, the ropes and counterweights, the little girls strapped into iron frames and hauled aloft by men in shirtsleeves. I was told it was all mere carpentry. I listened politely and believed none of it, or rather I believed it and found that it made no difference whatever. I have that garden still.

Text 2: Pulling Ropes in the Dark, by Gareth Lomax

An original contemporary memoir.

For three winters in my twenties I worked as a flyman on the pantomime at our city theatre, which meant I spent every performance in a cramped gallery high above the stage, in black clothes, hauling on ropes. My big moment came twice a night, when Cinderella’s kitchen had to vanish and the ballroom had to drop in. It took four of us, a lot of swearing under our breath, and a lighting cue that had to be exact to the second.

From up there you see everything that is wrong: the tape on the floor, the chipped paint on the pumpkin coach, the fairy godmother checking her phone in the wings. You would think it would spoil the show for you. It doesn’t. Because at the moment the ballroom came down, I could look through a gap in the drapes at the front rows, and every single night there was a child, mouth open, completely still, as if they had stopped breathing.

I knew it was plywood and pulleys. I had the rope burns to prove it. But watching those faces, I was never quite sure that it wasn’t also magic.

Both writers describe a pantomime transformation scene.

What are the similarities between the writers’ thoughts and feelings about the magic of the pantomime?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.