Widow Twankey

Widow Twankey is a female character in the pantomime Aladdin. The character is a pantomime dame, portrayed by a man; and is a comic foil to the principal boy, Aladdin—played by an actress.

The story of Aladdin is drawn from One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle-Eastern fables. It was first published in England between 1704 and 1714; and this story was dramatised in 1788 by John O'Keefe for Covent Garden. In 1813, a comic character of the "dumb slave" was introduced to Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp, as a vehicle for the clown, Joseph Grimaldi, and at the same time, a washer-woman, Ching Mustapha was introduced to the play.

Widow Twankey first occurs in 1861; the character runs a Chinese laundry in Peking, China and is a pantomime dame; that is, always played by a man. One of her sons, Aladdin, is the hero of the pantomime, while her other son, often named Wishy Washy (or Wishee Washee), just helps in the laundry. She is not pivotal in the plot (such as it is), but more a source of interaction with the audience through jokes and innuendo – mostly centred on items of underwear on the washing line.

The character has had a number of different names over the years: Ching Mustapha was followed by Wee Ping, Chow Chow, and Tan King. In 1861, the character became the Widow Twankay – named for a cheap blend of China tea.Twankay, or 'twankey' is an inferior grade of green tea, with an old, ragged, open leaf – the implication is that the widow is 'past her best' — with the name Twankay deriving from Tunxi in Anhui, from where the tea in China originates. Occasionally, the spelling of her name in the programme (but not the pronunciation on the stage) is varied to make it look more like a "Chinese" personal name – e.g., "Tuang Kee Chung" in a 1979 musical version.

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