What Makes a Pantomime Script Funny?
A tour of the tricks that make an audience laugh for two hours straight
Funny pantomime scripts are not all funny in the same way, and that's worth understanding before you commit to one. A script can be full of jokes on the page and still fall flat in the hall, while a script with fewer one-liners can have an audience roaring because the comedy is built into its structure rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Here's what we think actually separates the two.
Comedy that belongs to a character, not just a line
The strongest panto jokes are ones the audience can see coming from a character they already know, which is why the best comic writing in this catalogue lives in catchphrases rather than one-off gags. In Robin Hood, Dame Wilma Scarlet spots something out of place around her Outlaw camp, declares "that doesn't look right," and gets the whole audience shouting back "see it, say it, sorted!" In Rapunzel, Dame Betty Beehive's own name becomes the joke: "I'm up to no good!" answered by "Betty Behave!" These work because the audience isn't just hearing a joke, they're performing one, and a routine the crowd owns gets funnier every time it repeats rather than wearing thin.
Comic duos that argue rather than agree
A second comic character multiplies the first one's material if the two of them are in genuine tension rather than simply standing next to each other. In Dick Whittington, King Rat's hench-rats Frank and Sammy run an apology loop so persistent that King Rat eventually has to snap "have you quite finished," which is funnier than either of them being straightforwardly incompetent on their own. Rapunzel's Drip and Dribble and Robin Hood’s Bluff and Blunder do the same job differently: two henchmen whose uselessness compounds rather than cancels out. The lesson for anyone reading scripts side by side is to check whether the comic pairing actually plays off each other, or whether they're just delivering alternating lines.
A villain who's petty as well as evil
Real menace and real comedy usually sit better together than either one alone. In Jack and the Beanstalk, Mrs Blunderbore doubles the town's taxes and calls it kindness, because she was "going to triple them." Dick Whittington's King Rat is horrified not by cruelty itself but by the idea of clean water, since it gets in the way of spreading "disease and pestilence." Neither villain stops being a credible threat, but both get their best laughs from being small-minded about it, which gives a boo-hiss character a reason to be funny beyond the boos themselves.
Physical comedy that's earned, not just staged
A good panto set-piece needs a joke built into its mechanics, not just a funny costume or a pratfall. Hansel and Gretel's Dame Kipling makes her entrance under an enormous, precariously balanced pyramid of profiteroles that she loses in an offstage crash before she's said a word, which tells the audience everything about her before her monologue even starts. It's a joke that does character work as well as getting a laugh, which is a higher bar than physical comedy for its own sake.
Running gags that escalate rather than repeat
The difference between a joke that wears out and one that gets funnier is whether it changes on each return. A one-note gag repeated for a third time gets a groan; a gag that adds a new beat, a new stakes, or a new twist each time gets a bigger laugh with every repetition. Audience catchphrases work on exactly this principle: the loudness or commitment is built up in three stages, quiet, better, loudest, before the payoff lands properly. It's a small structural discipline, but it's the difference between a script that reads funny and a script that plays funny in front of three hundred people.
What this means when you're choosing a script
None of this shows up clearly from a synopsis alone, which is exactly why it's worth reading a full script before you commit. If you want a closer look at how individual jokes are built rather than how the comedy is structured across a whole show, our post on how to write a panto joke goes into the line-by-line mechanics. Here, the point is broader: comedy that belongs to a specific character, a genuine comic pairing, a villain with a petty streak, and gags built to escalate rather than repeat are what separate a script that's funny on the page from one that's funny in the room. It's also worth thinking about this alongside cast size: a big comic set-piece like the ones in The Little Mermaid or Alice In Wonderland needs a cast large enough to fill the stage around it, while scripts like Hansel and Gretel and Beauty and the Beast get the same effect from a tighter, small cast. Our large, medium and small cast pages are a good place to start narrowing that down. If you'd like to see how this plays out across a full script, start on our home page, request a free Perusal Script, or browse our full pantomime script catalogue to find your next production.