Cinderella Pantomime Characters: A Complete Guide
No two productions cast the Cinderella pantomime characters the same way, and the Dame is where they part company: one Dame, two, three, or none at all. We've gone with two, in Ammonia and Amnesia, which leaves the Baroness free to be straightforwardly awful without a wig to hide behind. Buttons keeps all his jokes and gets an unrequited love story underneath them. Everyone else, in casting order, is below.
Cinderella and Buttons
Cinderella is the titular character and holds the whole show together. It’s the classic panto rags to riches story and it’s the ultimate panto role for your leading lady. She needs to be a quadruple threat (singing, acting, dancing and incredibly fast costume changing!)
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 underneath the jokes we've given him a proper emotional thread. 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 doesn't want anyone to overhear, that he's in love with Cinderella and that 'unfortunately she's way out of my league'.
His catchphrase, which he teaches the audience himself, is 'Hiya gang' met with 'Hiya Buttons'. It's one of the more straightforward call and responses in our catalogue, and it gives him a strong recurring connection to the audience 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. Plenty of modern productions drop the Dame from this title altogether. None of those is the default; it depends on your group dynamic and who you have to cast. The Ugly Sisters also don't have to be played by men, the way a solo Dame usually is. They've been cast with women plenty of times, 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 her 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 rivalry that's distinct from the frequently used one-sister-plain, one-sister-vain arrangement. 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's holding out for the Prince. It's 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: 'Oh stop it. You lot remind me of a vineyard, all you do is whine!' She also can't 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 in good company alongside Griselda in Hansel and Gretel and Madam Meanie in Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
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 instead of making him disappear from the plot entirely.
The Fairy Godmother tradition usually plays serene and all-knowing. Ours doesn't. The character list bills her as Cinderella's 'stressed but spiritual guide', a proper subversion of the calm fairy archetype, and she'll happily tell you that 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 younger or less experienced performer a proper magical role, rather than an understudy's shadow of the lead fairy, is one of the more useful casting options 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 we're done with him, he will be Hard-up!' They're a compact double act that a smaller cast can combine with other minor roles if needed, since they only really need to carry the one scene, though they do resurface later 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 working local place names in among the announced guests, which is an easy way to get a 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 11 named principal characters and two supporting roles, plus a flexible ensemble of townsfolk, cleaners, footmen and ball guests, which puts it in our Medium Cast scripts. The full catalogue is on our All Scripts page if you're comparing titles, and our home page has the quickest links to everything else.
As the Raven Players put it, this script is 'an uproarious family-friendly fairytale with comedy and irreverent humour throughout!'
Request a free Perusal Script, or visit the Cinderella script page for the full synopsis and details. Our Performance Licences page covers the booking side when you get there.