Cinderella pantomime in both story and style at the Royal Strand Theatre in 1860: "Cinderella! Or the Lover, the Lackey, and the Little Glass Slipper". In the traditional pantomime version the opening scene takes place in a forest with a hunt in progress; here Cinderella first meets Prince Charming and his "right-hand man" Dandini, whose name and character come from Gioachino Rossini's opera ("La Cenerentola"). Cinderella mistakes Dandini for the Prince and the Prince for Dandini. Her father, Baron Hardup, is under the thumb of his two stepdaughters, the Ugly sisters, and has a servant, Cinderella's friend Buttons. (Throughout the pantomime,
American pantomime audience participation, and mild adult innuendo. Although pantomime was not frequently produced in the US during the 20th century and is not well known in America, productions of pantomime, both professional and amateur, have been seen nearly every year somewhere in the US over the past couple of decades. The earliest known pantomime in the U.S. was "Robinson Crusoe" produced at St. John's Theatre, New York in 1786. A production at Olympic Theatre in New York of "Humpty Dumpty" ran for over 1,200 performances in 1868, becoming one of the most successful American pantomimes. American pantomime, like the British pantomime,