6 - Pacific Pantomimes: Omai, or, A Trip Round the World and The Death of Captain Cook

Summary

Although Philip de Loutherbourg's and John O'Keefe's Omai, or, A Trip Round the World (1785) has received greater critical attention, it was the ‘Grand Serious-Pantomimic-Ballet’ of The Death of Captain Cook (1789) which became the dominant theatrical entertainment mediating the British encounter with the South Seas. The Death of Captain Cook was the most popular of the Pacific dramas, with the largest audiences and, for this reason, it will be examined first. The chapter will then proceed to subdivide the sequence of Covent Garden's Omai productions in order to discuss the implications of its licensed and unlicensed texts, and then to arrive, finally, at the minimal copy as licensed (without its subtitle), which was the format performed before the fewest number of people. The chapter will discriminate between stage business and scenery specific to Omai and that which was common to other pantomimes, including previous productions at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Just as Covent Garden's Death of Captain Cook used scenery recycled from Omai, so too Omai had borrowed scenery from earlier productions. Despite its enthusiastic uptake in the provinces and in circus-like arenas, The Death of Captain Cook probably represents the purer generic form, since Omai was not only produced at Covent Garden in the midst of censorship, but was also situated within rapidly developing conventions of English pantomime, distanced from its Commedia dell'Arte origins. Not only were Omai and The Death of Captain Cook the outcome of this intricate series of theatrical considerations, European voyagers' experiences of Pacific theatricality may also have been formative in attracting Western playwrights to the subject.