Best Pantomime Scripts for Medium Casts
Most groups aren't at either extreme. If you're not trying to find parts for 40 performers or making a virtue of doing it with ten, you're probably in the situation that most amateur dramatics societies and youth theatre groups actually face: a company of somewhere between 20 and 35 people, a mix of experience levels, and a reasonable number of performers who want a proper named role.
That's the medium cast sweet spot, and it's where five of our scripts live: Cinderella, Dick Whittington, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan. Each has between 10 and 13 principal roles, enough to give your strongest performers a substantial part each, with a supporting and ensemble cast behind them that doesn't need to be enormous to feel right.
What varies between them, and this is the more interesting question, is where the weight sits.
Photo: Raven Players
Cinderella: 11 principals, and the most female-weighted principal cast
Cinderella has 11 principal roles: Cinderella, Buttons, Fairy Sparkles, Baron Hardup, Baroness Hardup, Ammonia, Amnesia, the Prince, Dandini, and the Fairy Godmother on the edges of that count. The Fairy Godmother appears in fewer scenes than you might expect because Fairy Sparkles, her intern, actually carries more of the comedy and stage time.
The character split is worth noting for groups where casting gender matters. Cinderella, Fairy Sparkles and Baroness Hardup are fantastic female roles, and Grabbit, Runn, Dandini and the Emcee can easily be played by women too, not to mention the Prince who can be played by an actress in the principal boy tradition. If your group has more female members than male (which is common across amateur dramatics), this is one of the more naturally flexible scripts in the catalogue.
The ensemble in Cinderella covers a lot of ground: mice-turned-footmen in the transformation scene (a children's favourite), townsfolk, and ball guests. The ball guest names can be localised to your area, it reliably gets a laugh from the audience when they hear a familiar name.
Dick Whittington: 11 principals and a genuine villain ensemble
Dick Whittington has 11 principals: Dick, Alice, Dame Sarah Snafflebratt, Idle Jack, Alderman Fitzwarren, Eileen the cat, King (or Queen) Rat, Frank, Sammy, Captain Watt, and Fairy Bow-Bells. King Rat is explicitly noted in the script as interchangeable with Queen Rat, which is a casting decision rather than a rewrite.
The structure of this script is slightly different from the others in this band because the villain has a whole gang behind them: King Rat with Frank and Sammy as named hench-rats, plus rat ensemble behind them. That gives your ensemble a clearly defined faction with a costume identity, which tends to produce more engaged ensemble performers than a generic "townsfolk" chorus. Sailors, pest controllers, and Moroccan traders add further distinct groups across the script's two acts.
Captain Watt is a substantial role that sits primarily in the ship scenes, and leads the Mop Drill, a hugely popular classic panto set piece. He (or she) is a brilliant role for a strong performer who you want to feature prominently in one section of the show.
Photo: Churt Amateur Dramatics
Pinocchio: nine principals with scene-specific featured roles
Pinocchio sits at nine or ten principals depending on whether you count Mrs Johnson, the schoolhouse teacher, as principal or supporting. She is pivotal to her scene and a unique take on the nose-growing sequence, a key part of the Pinocchio story, she's worth casting carefully regardless of the label.
What makes Pinocchio distinctive in the medium cast group is the range of worlds. You move from a town square to a carpenter's workshop, a schoolhouse, a circus, and underwater: five distinct settings with five distinct ensemble costume requirements. Horace, Charlie, and Sandy are half-donkey circus performers who are essentially ensemble members given featured roles for one scene. The circus also includes the Ringmaster, a backup-baddie and Flummox, the megaphone voiced announcer for the Mayor who works well with a interactive ensemble.
Fairy Solid is the villain, and just like King/Queen Rat in Dick Whittington, can be a male or female sibling to the squeaky-clean Fairy Liquid, the good fairy.
Sleeping Beauty: 10 principals and a 100 year long interval
Sleeping Beauty has the fewest principals of any script outside the small-cast group: ten. Gerald the Herald, the King, Queenie (the Dame), Princess Aurora, Prince Juan, Carabosse, Plum, and the three good fairies Silk, Cashmere, and Velvet.
What lifts it out of the small-cast band is that the script is written around a court, and a court needs people in it. The sleeping-courtiers scene in Act Two, where the entire ensemble is waking up simultaneously after a 100 year slumber, is one of the more striking visual sequences in the catalogue and needs enough bodies on stage to make the joke land. The comic princes, suitors for Aurora who can be named after local towns and landmarks, are walk-on ensemble roles that work for performers who want a character identity without significant lines.
The three good fairies are three distinct named roles with proper stage time, which is useful if you have three performers of similar experience level who all want something visible and characterful.
Peter Pan: 10 principals, with room to grow
Peter Pan currently sits at ten principals: Wendy, John, Michael, Peter Pan, Dame Smee, Hugh, Captain Hook, Line, Sinker, and Tinker Bell (who is a non-speaking but structurally central role, played as a fairy light effect or as an actress in black). The four named Lost Boys: Tootles, Slightly, Curly, and Nibs, are supporting roles with a reasonable amount of stage time, and the show benefits from treating them as featured members of the ensemble rather than background performers.
The three ensemble groups: pirates, Lost Boys, and mermaids, give the cast three distinct costume worlds to inhabit across the show. Mr and Mrs Darling can be played by the actors who play the named Lost Boys in the Neverland scenes, which is a confirmed doubling solution if you need to save two casting slots.
One important note: productions of Peter Pan in the UK require an additional licence from Concord Theatricals on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hospital, separate from the NLP script licence. This applies regardless of which version of the script you use and should be factored into your production planning. Full details are on the Peter Pan script page.
Choosing between them
These five scripts share a cast band but they're quite different shows. Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are the most female-principal-weighted. Dick Whittington gives the ensemble the clearest faction identity. Pinocchio has the most distinct worlds to dress. Peter Pan is the one with the strongest built-in case for including children across multiple ensemble groups.
If your company is more compact, one of our Small Cast Scripts might suit you better; if you have a larger group with lots of ensemble energy, then check out our Large Casts Scripts instead.
Once you’ve found something you’d like to read, request a free Perusal Script and see for youself.