Hansel and Gretel Pantomime Script Spotlight
A sweet and wickedly funny adventure!
Our Hansel and Gretel pantomime script bakes all the way through rather than sitting the theme on top as set dressing. Sugartown throws a centenary celebration party and forgets to invite the witch, which is the sort of oversight that gets two children kidnapped. Dame Kitty Kipling owns the bakery, Griselda's Gingerbread House is a destination and not a backdrop, and there’s a Great British Bake Off sensibility to the whole thing, which keeps the cake puns coming thick and fast.
Synopsis
When Sugartown holds an enormous celebration of cakes and biscuits, the wicked witch Griselda feels conspicuously left out. As is her right, she demands that someone from the town come to visit her, and her henchman Stinkworth sets about making that happen, capturing Hansel and Gretel and taking them to the Gingerbread House deep in the forest.
Dame Kitty Kipling decides she can't stand by and let it happen. With her band of misfits, she heads into the forest to bring Hansel and Gretel home.
This panto has jokes baked all the way through and delivers fun by the hundreds and thousands!
Straight from the Script
Greg considers his career options:
Greg: 'Maybe one day I'll open my own bakery and sell hot pastries.'
Dame Kipling: 'Don't be silly; no one will want to eat a Gregg's sausage roll!'
Casting Hansel and Gretel: Who this script suits
Eight principal characters and four supporting roles put Hansel and Gretel among our scripts for small casts, though it flexes upward comfortably. The three named bakers, Mr Wollyhood, Mrs Peith and Miss Merry, can be played by three performers or spread across a larger Ensemble depending on what your cast needs, and the same is true of the ghost and townspeople scenes. Staging is straightforward throughout, and the baking competition opening gives the show immediate colour without any elaborate set. A modest principal count producing a full-scale show also makes this one of the more practical Easter pantomime scripts, if December is already crowded for you.
Dame Kitty Kipling is the part to cast first. She takes the audience on within a minute of arriving, picks a man out of the front rows and is still coming back to him two scenes later, and she owns the call and response that runs from Act One through to the rescue, so she wants a performer who can hold a room and stay in charge of it. Greg opens the show and narrates it, which makes the two of them a double act carrying most of the running time between them. The Customer is written as three customers played by one performer with a small costume change each time, and if you would rather share the part out, the script gives you the alternative wording to do it.
14 scenes sound like a lot, but four sets do all the work, the Town Square, the bakery, the forest and the Gingerbread House, with six front-cloth scenes falling between them. Two things are worth planning early. The Act Two opener puts the Ensemble on as ghosts and skeletons and is written with UV in mind, and Scene Eleven plays out in the auditorium, with Dame Kipling and Greg entering at the back and meeting in the middle, so you want a venue with aisles you can use safely.
If eight principals is still one or two too many, our Beauty and the Beast has the tightest principal cast we publish at seven and also plays happily outside December. The difference is in the four supporting parts, since ours here are bakers who can absorb as many Ensemble lines as your numbers need, where its four are talking furniture and want four performers.
Hansel and Gretel Reviews
‘The script was cleverly written, with lots of adult innuendos woven in alongside the humour for younger viewers, making it genuinely entertaining for all ages!’
Suffolk News
‘I chose this script as it is a traditional panto script with all the usual panto contents and gags... The overall audience reaction was fantastic, many saying it’s the best panto we’ve ever done.’
St Bernadette's Parish Players
‘We had a great performance week with a number of sold-out performances, so were completely delighted!’
PC Players
Request your free Perusal Script
Small principal cast, full-size show, and easiest to judge with the whole thing in front of you. Request a free Perusal Script and our Hansel and Gretel will be sent over, or look at the Hansel and Gretel script page for the character list and running time. Our home page is the quickest way into the rest of the site, and the All Scripts page has the full catalogue.