Hansel and Gretel Pantomime Characters

Casting a pantomime always starts in the same place: working out who's who. If you're looking at our Hansel and Gretel pantomime script and trying to match your society's talent to the right parts, here's every named character, what they're actually like on the page, and who tends to suit each role best.

Hansel and Gretel

The title characters are drawn fairly closely from the Brothers Grimm original: two children sent into the forest, a trail that fails, a house made of food, a witch with an oven. What our script does with them is give them proper comic timing rather than playing them straight as fairy tale victims. Hansel's bag of stones for leaving a trail gets some good gags, and it's Gretel who gets the script's sharpest moment: when Griselda tries to trick her into checking the oven, Gretel plays along and pushes the witch in herself, on her own initiative, rather than being rescued. That's a meaningful difference from a Gretel who's simply relieved when someone else saves her, and it's worth knowing when you're casting the part, since it needs someone who can hold a scene alone against the villain.

Both parts need to sustain a sibling double act (bickering, finishing each other's sentences and being petulant stepchildren!) as well as carry individual moments, so look for a pair with existing chemistry if you can.

Dame Kitty Kipling

Hansel and Gretel isn't part of the historic core of the pantomime repertoire the way Cinderella or Snow White are and there's no traditional Dame name attached to the story. Nick's had a free hand here, and the result is Dame Kitty Kipling, Sugartown's baker, cake-maker and self-appointed biscuit connoisseur. She makes a mean profiterole tower too; something a bit different for your props department to create!

The Ensemble spend most of Scene One trying to land a marketing slogan for her baking (exceedingly tasty, exceedingly delicious, exceedingly marvellous) and never quite manage it, which is the kind of running joke that rewards a Dame with sharp comic timing rather than one relying on costume alone. Kipling also carries the show's audience participation device: whenever she gets flustered she calls out 'I'm gonna go!' and the audience shout 'Use your loaf!' back at her, a call and response that gets reused right through to the ghost-chase scene in the forest. Her backstory has a proper pun buried in it too: her ex-husband Rudyard left her to become an author and write The Jungle Book, which tells you exactly the register the character lives in and proves this adaptation has more than just the Bear Necessities!

Giving the Dame a trade is a pattern worth knowing if you're casting across more than one of our scripts. Widow Twankey runs a laundrette in our Aladdin script, Sarah the Cook runs a restaurant in Dick Whittington. Kipling's bakery is the same idea in a different shopfront, so a Dame who's played one of those roles before will find this one familiar territory.

Greg Kipling

Greg is Dame Kipling's son and the show's comic, and he does the bulk of the wordplay: eggs boxes and games consoles, flour and flowers, and whisks used as weapons as the rescue party heads off. He's also the one who breaks the fourth wall to explain what's going on to the audience in Scene One, which makes him as much a narrator-figure as a gag machine, so cast someone comfortable talking directly to a full house.

The comic-son-of-the-Dame is another recurring shape across the catalogue: Idle Jack is Sarah the Cook's son in Dick Whittington, and Simon Trot is Dame Trot's other son in our Jack and the Beanstalk script. Greg fits that mould rather than inventing a new one, which is worth knowing if you're doubling up casting decisions across a season.

Griselda

A wicked witch is mandated by the source material, in the sense that a witch villain who lures children with food is the one element of the Grimm story every version of Hansel and Gretel has to keep. What Nick's script adds is a name; Griselda, and a very comic voice built on cooking puns and cannibalism, right down to naming her own crimes ('Basil au vin', 'KFC' standing for 'Kentucky Fried Children') with the same relish she'd use for an actual recipe.

She's one of a number of our catalogue’s villains lifted directly from a fairy tale rather than invented from nothing, in company with Gothel in our Rapunzel script. Both need a performer who can be genuinely menacing to the children onstage while still landing a pun a beat later, which is a different skill to playing a wholly invented panto villain who can stay cartoonish throughout.

Stinkworth

Stinkworth is Griselda's henchman, and for most of the show he plays exactly that: the one who threatens the townsfolk, sets up the kidnapping and keeps Griselda’s plans moving. What makes him worth a proper look at audition is the turn in the final scene: told to push Gretel into the oven, he refuses, on the grounds that 'it turns out I've got a few ethics and morals,' and ends the play deciding to go straight, and vegan. That's a genuine change of heart played for a laugh rather than a moral lecture, and it needs a performer who can sell both the menace early on and the redemption at the end without either feeling like a different character.

Ernest and Edna

Ernest is Hansel and Gretel's father and Edna their stepmother, and the script does something with Edna that's easy to miss on a first read: she starts the play going along with Stinkworth's plan to be rid of the children, gets tricked into believing it's a 'finishing school,' and then spends the forest scene gradually winning the children over with genuinely bad jokes before guilt and rescue instinct take over entirely by Act Two. It's a small redemption arc running alongside Stinkworth's larger one, so Edna needs more than a stock strict-stepmother read if it's going to land. Ernest is steadier throughout (more earnest, if you will!) and is the one who insists on telling the children the truth about Griselda in Scene One and therefore providing the audience with the backstory they need too.

The Bakers of Sugartown

Mr Wollyhood, Mrs Peith and Miss Merry are named recurring bakers who run the cake and baguette/baklava gags through both Act One celebration scenes. The Author's Notes flag these as flexible: with a smaller cast, their lines can be absorbed into the Ensemble, and the reverse is also true if you want to give more of your cast a named moment. The recurring Customer at Dame Kipling's Bakery in Scene Five is written for one actor playing three quick costume-change parts, so it's a good showcase role for someone comfortable with rapid changes, but can be split into smaller roles should you wish to share it among your ensemble.

Who Hansel and Gretel Suits

Counting only the roles that carry the plot rather than the flexible bakery bit-parts, Hansel and Gretel sits at eight principals: Hansel, Gretel, Dame Kipling, Greg, Griselda, Stinkworth, Ernest and Edna. That puts it comfortably in our Small Cast bracket, with the three named bakers and the Ensemble on top as supporting and scalable roles depending on how many people you've got to cast. It's a good option for a society that wants a strong principal cast without needing a huge company to fill it out.

If you're getting ready to cast, the best next step is to request a free Perusal Script and read the whole thing before you commit anyone to a role. And if you've already read it and you're ready to move ahead, our Performance Licences page has everything you need to get started. You can browse the rest of the catalogue on our All Scripts page if you're still weighing up which title suits your society this season.