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Victorian Pantomime: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Jim Davis; pp. xii + 230. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, £52.50, $84.00.
In John Ruskin's view, the spiritually elevating character of pantomime made it comparable to a church service, as they were "two theatrical entertainments where the imaginative congregations still retain some true notions of the value of human and beautiful things" and likewise "retain some just notion of the truth, in moral things" (qtd. in Davis 36). Meanwhile, in the view of Francis Close, Dean of Carlisle, the press reports of the scandalous Boxing Day pantomimes of 1859 were "calculated to strike the heart of the Christian, and send us all on our knees to pray to God to avert the judgement we deserved" (qtd. in Davis 93). Janice Norwood, in discussing the many in-jokes aimed at the East End audiences of the Britannia, describes pantomime as "a supremely self-conscious form of theatre" (82), and her assertion is underlined by Jill A. Sullivan's descriptions of the abundant localized humor featured at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, and by Ann Featherstone's survey of commentary by reviewers for the Era on regional productions elsewhere. But Jim Davis quotes Anne Varty's suggestion that the power of pantomime lay in the obliteration of self-consciousness-"children in the pantomime audience could enter a magical world of infinite possibility, while the adults were invited to escape into a world of anarchy and subversion" (7)-and her assertion is seconded by many extracts from Victorian observers, including the reviewer for the Era who praised one of William Beverly's scenic depictions of Fairyland as "so exquisitely glowing in its execution" as to transport the viewer "into regions so conceived, and so peopled, only in his dreams" (qtd. in Davis 92).
Davis's clear and concise introduction to this...