NOVEMBER is here and the pantomime season is approaching fast. Theatres and arts centres around the country have announced their shows and their stars, hoping to ensure the bums-on-seats that ensure their financial viability for the rest of the year.

Pantomime is a peculiarly British institution, rich in tradition and full of expectation for younger audiences. These days, many people book before one season is over for next year’s production. Theatre-goers are surrounded by gender-neutral casting, but oddly, where the pantomime Principal Boy was always played by a girl, that is a thing of the past, with a boy-band refugee or muscly young dreamboat as the prince (and the princess is still a female role!)

Not so the dame, who just has to be what is known as “a fat man in a frock”. He’s the one who gets the funniest lines, routines and songs, and the greatest number of changes of the most colourful costumes. The dame is always helped by her “younger son” who is often the comic. Then there are baddies, toxic sisters, bullying squires, knockabout duos and lots of romance. The latest pop anthems are woven into the story, and good ALWAYS triumphs over bad.

This season, starting (in Cirencester and Bristol) on 25th November and running until mid-January, has four productions of Jack and the Beanstalk (Bournemouth, Bristol, Southampton and Yeovil), three Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Bath, Plymouth and Wimborne), two each of Sleeping Beauty (Poole and Salisbury) and A Christmas Carol (Bristol and Frome) and Robin Hood at Bath, Peter Pan at Weymouth, Goldilocks and the Three Bears at Bristol, Cinderella at Exeter and Beauty and the Beast at Weston super Mare. Not an Aladdin or Ali Baba in sight in the professional theatres, though many of the town and village amateur productions have yet to be announced.

The biggest star names of the region’s 2024/5 pantomime season are Lesley Joseph and Rob Rinder in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Plymouth from 13th December to 11th January, Ashley Banjo and Diversity in Jack and the Beanstalk in Southampton from 14th December to 5th January, Calum Lill and David Ribi in Jack and the Beanstalk in Bournemouth from 7th December to 5th January and Olivia Birchenough and Emma Norman joining Jon Monie and Nick Wilton at Bath from 12th December to 12th January. Brian Conley, stars in Goldilocks and the Three Bears at Bristol, joined by his daughter Lucy as well as well-known panto dame David Roberts from 7th December to 5th January. Todd Carty joins Chris Jarvis for Sleeping Beauty at Poole from 12th December to 5th January.

Other familiar television faces join the casts at various theatres. South West based theatre company Le Navet Bete returns to Exeter Northcott, this time with their new version of Cinderella from 28th November to 5th January, the longest running show and the only production of the most popular pantomime story of all in this year’s cache.

So it’s time to choose your favourite story, your favourite star, or maybe the nearest theatre to where you live … and book those seats.