Music Hall Stars

To fulfil the increasing demand for a recognisable face in the cast, producers began to hire the stars of Music Hall, an emerging genre. Drury Lane’s 1888 Babes in the Wood created the opportunity for two such performers to partner up and broaden Pantomime’s comedic scope. Herbert Campbell was six feet two, and weighed just under twenty stones. 

Dan Leno was a lean five foot four. Both were established comics. Although Campbell was cast with Harry Nicholls as one of The Babes, and Leno as The Baroness, it was the moment each night when Campbell and Leno were together on stage that raised the roof. Eschewing the trapdoors and transformations used by other theatres, Drury Lane kept it simple. Impresario Augustus Harris’ big and small comedy duo was the original template for all later double acts, for which he was named ‘The Father of Modern Pantomime’.

Campbell and Leno (right) performed together for the last time in Drury Lane’s 1903 Humpty Dumpty. They both died in the following year. In the previous fifteen years they had played Dames, Barons, nurses, pirates, Idle Jacks, children, washer women, Kings and Queens. They had proved Music Hall turns to be the perfect performers of the new style of pantomime. 

Theatre managers no longer included regular actors in their companies, preferring to hire famous comics and speciality acts from Variety and Music Hall. Today’s casting of TV celebrities to top the bill at each year’s panto is a direct result of Campbell and Leno’s success.

With the surprise loss of their two big box-office draws, Drury Lane had to quickly source new stars. Music Hall ‘nobility’ Harry Randall (as Dame), Anglo-French comic Harry Fragson, and singer Walter Passmore were recruited. The theatre had established itself as the finest purveyor of pantomime and brought in only the best acts to maintain this dominance. In 1912 the theatre took a notable risk, in creating a completely different version of The Sleeping Beauty with new characters and plotline; and a sequel the following year, The Sleeping Beauty Re-Awakened, a pantomime first.