Cinderella Pantomime Characters: A Complete Guide
We rounded up all the Cinderella pantomime characters in our production, from Buttons to Baroness Hardup, so directors know exactly who they are casting and what each one brings to the stage.
If you are comparing versions of this story, ours makes a clear choice on the point where productions differ most: two full Dame roles in Ammonia and Amnesia, alongside a Buttons who carries a genuine unrequited love story rather than pure comic relief, and a Baroness who is gleefully, unapologetically awful. Here is who you will be casting.
Cinderella and Buttons
Buttons is panto’s one fixed traditional comic, present in almost every version of this story regardless of what else changes around him, and that convention holds here too. He opens the show as narrator, and rather than treating him as pure comic relief, we give him a proper emotional thread underneath the jokes. He starts to tell the audience the story is ‘all about… me’, gets interrupted by the ensemble leaving, and eventually admits, in a line he does not want anyone to overhear, that he is in love with Cinderella and knows she is ‘way out of my league’. His catchphrase, ‘hiya gang’ met with ‘hiya Buttons’, is one of our panto script catalogue’s more straightforward audience participation call and responses, and it gives him a strong recurring audience connection that carries that quieter thread through the whole show without ever slowing the comedy down.
Ammonia and Amnesia, the Dames
Cinderella doesn’t lock you into one dame set-up, and productions vary it constantly. Some cast the two Ugly Sisters as a pair of Dames. Some put the Wicked Stepmother, Baroness Hardup or her equivalent, in the dame role instead and play the sisters straight. Some use three Dames, stepmother and both sisters together. And plenty of modern productions drop a dame from this title altogether. None of these is the default, it genuinely depends on your group dynamic and who you have to cast. It’s also worth knowing the Ugly Sisters don’t have to be played by men, the way a solo dame usually is: they’ve been cast with women too, so two strong comic actresses is just as legitimate a way in as a pair of performers used to playing dame. We’ve gone with two full Dames in Ammonia and Amnesia for much of the comedy and silliness, with the Baroness played straight as the villain.
Each of our two Ugly Sisters has their own traits and quirks. Amnesia forgets her own name mid-introduction and has to be reminded by her sister and Ammonia has a few smell based jokes thrown her way! Their sniping over Ammonia’s ‘Chanel’ dress against Amnesia’s outfit, which was ‘made by the council’, sets up a running rivalry that is distinct from a frequently used one-sister-plain-one-sister-vain setup. Both sisters get an audience-selection routine, pulling a man from the crowd each to flirt with outrageously, before dropping them the moment either remembers she is holding out for the Prince. It is a strong choice for a group with two performers who can commit fully to comic self-regard and play off each other rather than simply alternating lines.
Baroness Hardup
The Baroness gets one of the sharper villain monologues in the catalogue. She admits outright that she married Baron Hardup for his money, gave Cinderella’s bedroom to the cat, and takes pride in petty cruelty for its own sake: ‘I haven’t got a good reason for it; I just enjoy the power’. When the audience boos, she turns it back on them rather than simply weathering it, telling them they remind her of a vineyard because ‘all they do is whine!’ She also cannot get Buttons’s name right on purpose, calling him ‘Buttocks’ throughout, which gives every one of their exchanges an easy, repeatable laugh without needing new material each time. She’s a classic panto baddie who keeps good company in the catalogue alongside Hansel and Gretel’s Griselda and Madam Meanie in our Goldilocks and the Three Bears panto script.
Baron Hardup, Fairy Godmother and Fairy Sparkles
Baron Hardup is written as Cinderella’s downtrodden father, present but powerless against his wife, which keeps the family dynamic honest rather than making him disappear from the plot entirely.
The Fairy Godmother tradition usually plays serene and all-knowing. Ours does not. She is billed as Cinderella’s ‘stressed but spiritual’ guide, a proper subversion of the calm fairy archetype, and she has openly admitted budget cuts have hit the fairy world too, right down to the fairy lights. Most of the actual magic is delegated to her intern, Fairy Sparkles, who needs a couple of attempts to get anything right. Giving a group the option of a younger or less experienced performer taking a proper magical role, rather than understudying the lead fairy outright, is one of the more useful casting decisions in the script.
Grabbit and Runn
The two bailiffs arrive early to chase Baron Hardup’s debts and get a solid pun to close their first scene, promising Cinderella that when they catch up with him he will be ‘Hard-up’ in every sense. They are a compact double act that a smaller cast can double up with other minor roles if needed, since they only really need to carry the one scene, though they do resurface later in the plot to keep the pressure on Hardup Manor.
If a hapless double-act sidekick pairing sounds familiar, it should. It is a device we come back to across the catalogue: Bluff and Blunder do the same job for the Sheriff of Nottingham in our Robin Hood script, Slip and Slap serve Octavia in The Little Mermaid, and Drip and Dribble do Gothel’s bidding in Rapunzel. Give the villain, or in this case the plot, a double act rather than a single sidekick, and the comedy gets somewhere to bounce between two performers instead of landing on one.
Prince Charming, Dandini and the Emcee
Prince Charming and his confidant Dandini give the ball scenes their structure, with Dandini doing much of the legwork while the Prince searches the crowd for Cinderella. The Emcee, Master or Mistress of Ceremonies at the Royal Ball, is a flexible role, and our author’s notes suggest you can work in local place names among the announced guests, which is a nice way to get an easy laugh specific to your own town rather than a generic one.
Casting the Cinderella Pantomime Characters: Who It Suits
Between Hardup Manor and the Royal Ball, this script has eleven named principal roles, plus a flexible ensemble of townsfolk, cleaners, footmen and ball guests, which puts it in our Medium Cast scripts. If you are weighing it up against the rest of the catalogue, our full range of pantomime scripts is worth a browse too.
As one group put it: ‘An uproarious family-friendly fairytale with comedy and irreverent humour throughout!’ (Raven Players on Cinderella).
If this cast list sounds like a good fit for your group, request a free Perusal Script for Cinderella or visit the Cinderella script page for the full synopsis and details.