Snow White Pantomime Characters: A Complete Guide

Fifteen Principals, Fifteen Different Jobs

The Snow White pantomime characters run to 15 principals, and almost none of them ask the same thing of a performer. There is a baker Dame, a comic brother and sister, a villain who transforms in the final scene, a mirror that answers only in verse, a Narrator the whole company talks over, and a band of seven with one trait apiece. If your membership is mixed, that spread is the reason to look at this one. Here's the full company, and what each part wants.

Snow White and Prince Frederic

Snow White spends Act One lonely rather than hunted, with a birthday nobody can quite ruin and a stepmother who gives her a gift coupon for a free brain transplant. Her list of what she wants in a prince ends on someone who can drive her to panto rehearsals every Monday and Thursday, written to take your own local detail.

The ending is the part to read before you cast her. When Frederic proposes in the throne room she turns him down: 'We've only known each other for an hour or so, and you were a Delivery Man for most of that.' She takes the throne on her own terms and leaves the marriage as something they might get around to later. The part wants comic timing alongside the warmth, since she plays that refusal straight into a room that’s expecting a wedding.

Frederic spends almost the whole show disguised as a delivery man for a firm called Amazoom, whose slogan is 'We deliver, before you've ordered!' He tells the audience his secret in Scene Two and asks them to keep it, so the house knows more than anyone onstage for the rest of the evening. His reveal comes in Scene Ten, played against an enormous teddy bear positioned so that he and Dame Babs never quite see each other, and the timing of that scene is the whole gag. Our Author's Notes suggest a reversible jacket so the princely costume is one movement away. He is the straight man for most of the night, which makes him a good fit for a performer who plays well off other people.

Dame Babs, Sally and Simon

Barbra Bafflebottom, Dame Babs to everyone, is the finest baker in the kingdom and the reason the show gets two long comic set pieces in a domestic set. The kitchen scene in Scene Five runs almost entirely on mishearing: flour for flowers, ingredients for greedy ants, currants fetched from behind the rabbit hutch, and a secret ingredient that turns out to be a whole block of lard dropped into the mixing bowl. She is also the last one standing in the ghost scene, which finishes with the ghost taking one look at her and running for it, and her verdict on the business: 'Did I just get ghosted?!'

Sally and Simon are her daughter and son, introduced as Silly Sally and Simple Simon in an exchange that never resolves, since Sally presents Simon to the audience as her sister and the argument runs on from there. Queen Devilia orders the pair to take Snow White into the Black Forest and kill her, and their refusal is the hinge the plot turns on. They also lead the songsheet in Scene Fifteen. They work as an evenly matched duo, with most of their material passing back and forth between the two of them, so they suit two performers who already play well together.

Queen Devilia and the Magic Mirror

Devilia takes the kingdom in the opening scene with a prenup rather than a curse, claiming the King's crown, his kingdom and his car keys. She plots in rhyming couplets and interrupts herself while she is doing it, and her murder weapon arrives as an iPhone with a cracked screen, which the Magic Mirror has to explain represents a poisoned apple.

Her ending is a transformation rather than a banishment. A wish she made back in Act One turns out to have been a spell of her own making, so the moment Snow White sits on the throne she grows a beard and becomes Grumpy. That gives the part a broad, enjoyable villain for most of the evening and a very silly finish, and it suits a performer who will commit to both.

The Mirror tells the truth, answers only in rhyme, and won’t answer anything not put to it in verse: 'You can rant and rave and shout and squeal, but unless you rhyme my lips are sealed.' It suits someone who can hold a rhythm and stay deadpan while Devilia loses her temper next to them.

The Narrator

The Narrator arrives in Scene One with a storybook and never once reaches the end of the story. The King and Queen complain about where they are standing, then that they are meant to be in a car, and the opening becomes a running argument about a Ford Galaxy. In Scene Eight the brothers act out every line of narration as it’s read to them, then pass a clock around when they hear that they 'passed the time'. By Scene Twelve the whole company simply tells the Narrator to get out. Best of all is the last appearance, where the closing narration begins, the tabs shut across the stage, and 'Oh forget it!' comes from behind them.

It’s a proper part rather than a linking device, and it suits a performer with comic patience, since every beat they get is a setback. Our Sleeping Beauty hands its narration to three good fairies who deliver it in rhyme and are listened to, which is a very different job from this one.

Lucky, Dizzy, Jolly, Skippy, Cosy, Snoozy and Clappy

Each of the seven brothers gets one clear trait to play, which makes them a good set of parts to hand to newer members. Lucky appears as a hand and a handkerchief poking out from behind a tree before anyone else arrives. Dizzy is useless with directions. Jolly finds the positive in everything, including that 'even the word hopeless has got hope in it'. Skippy produces a health and safety form for the wrong sort of concussion. Cosy leads a magic spell the brothers had long since given up. Snoozy is fiercely loyal and a very deep sleeper.

Clappy is the one worth thinking about hardest. He claps twice whenever he is spoken to and says almost nothing else, which reads as a single joke for two acts and then turns out to be the mechanism that resolves the plot, because two claps summon the Magic Mirror and that is what lets Snow White ask the right question in the throne room. In the same scene he claps the lights out, the castle being a smart home. It’s a part with very few lines and one of the biggest payoffs in the script, so it suits somebody who enjoys carrying a running gag all evening and being rewarded for it. Across the seven, performers of similar comic ability share the load well, since most of their scenes move quickly between them.

King Norman and Queen Linda

The two supporting roles appear in the opening sequence, arguing with the Narrator about where they are standing before the story has started. Queen Linda dies, King Norman is tricked into the marriage that hands Devilia the kingdom, and neither comes back. They suit two members who would enjoy a proper comic scene without a full evening's commitment, and they are onstage for the show's first laugh.

Casting the Snow White Pantomime Characters: Who It Suits

With 15 principal characters and two supporting roles, plus an Ensemble of townsfolk, delivery men and ghosts, Snow White is one of our pantomime scripts for large casts, and one of the traditional pantomime titles an audience already knows the shape of. Seven of those 15 are the brothers, each carrying one trait rather than a full character arc, so the count asks less of any one performer than it first suggests. A group with plenty of willing members and a handful of strong leads will find this one absorbs everybody. The rest of the catalogue is on our All Scripts page, and our home page opens onto everything else.

The Somerset Drama Festival put it this way: 'All the pantomime ingredients are there: ghost sequences, a UV scene, slapstick, knockabout & a touch of evil.'

The quickest way to see whether that spread of parts matches your membership is to read it. Request a free Perusal Script, or visit the Snow White script page for the full synopsis and details. When you are ready to book, our Performance Licences page covers what you need.