THE BEASTS
1 The Goose in Moose is, or so they say, the Hamlet of animal roles, introspective and moody as only a costive bird straining over its egg might be. There is a full gamut of emotion in the Goose role -- loyalty aion to her mother; joy and delight at her own maternity; heartbreak at loss of egg; fear and trembling at the wide variety of gruesome possibilities which might occur if, in the infiercouplings of possible texts which occur all the time in the promiscuity of Pantoland, oory effortlessly segues into aory, so that Moose twins up with Jad the Beanstalk, involving an egg-hungry ogre, or with Robin Hood, incorporating a goose-hungry Sheriff of Nottingham. hat the Goose, like the Dame, is a female role usually, though not always, played by a man. But the Goose does not represent the exaggerated and parodic femininity of ahe Gooses femininity is real. She is all woman. Withe trality of the egg in her life. So the Goose deserves an interpreter with the sophisticated teique ahy fender of the onnagata, the female impersonators of the Japanese Kabuki theatre, who make you weep at the sadness i in the sleeves of a kimono as they quiver with suppressed emotion at a womans lot.
Because of this, and because she is the prime focus of all attention, the Goose in Moose is the premier animal role, even more so than. . .
2 Dick Whittingtons Cat: Dick Whittingtons cat is the Scaramouche of Pantoland, limber, agile, and going on two legs more often than on four to stress his status as intermediary between the world of the animals and our world. If he possesses some of the chthonic ambiguity of all dark messengers between different modes of being, heless he is never less than a perfect valet to his master and hops and skips at Dicks bidding. His is therefore less of a starring role than the Goose, even if his rat-catg activities are tral to the a and it is a difficult to imagine Dick without his cat as Morecambe without Wise.
hat this cat is male almost to a fault, uionably a tom-cat, and personated by a man; some things are sacrosanct, even in Pantoland. A tom-cat is maleness personified, whereas. . .
3 Daisy the Cow is so female it takes two whole men to represent her, one on his own couldnt hack it. The back legs of the pantomime quadruped are traditionally a thaask, but the front ehe ce to indulge in all manner of antics, flirting, flattering, fluttering those endless eyelashes and, sometimes, if the coordinatioweewo ends is good enough, Daisy does a tap-dance, which makes her massive udder with its many danglis dip and sway in the most salaanner, bringing bae the notion of a basic crudely reproductive female sexuality of which those of us who dont lactate often do not like to be reminded. (They have lactation, geion all the time in mind in Pantoland.)
This rude femaleness requires two men to mimic it, as Ive said; therefore you could call Daisy a Dame, squared.
These three are the principal animal leads in Pantoland, although Mother Hubbard, a free-floating Dame who might turn up in a, always es apanied by her dog but, more often than not, Chuckles gets in o here, and real animals dont t. Pantomime horses crop up anywhere and mimic rats are not fio Dick Whittington but inhabit derellas kit, even drive her coach; there are mid lizards too. Birds. You need robins to cover up the Babes in the Wood. Emus, you get sometimes. Ducks. You .
When Pantoland was young, and I mean really you