Snowman Play

[Robert Brooks]

Snowman Play

This was one memorable scene I particularly enjoyed at a theatre adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman I saw in London in 2002, shortly before Christmas.

For anyone unfamiliar with this much loved animated classic, here’s a link to its entry on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snowman
The basic gist is a young boy makes a snowman in his back garden who magically comes to life.

I was twelve at the time, roughly the same age as the young actor who played the boy; roughly the same age also as the group of five or six girls sitting two rows from the front, seemingly without adult supervision. Based on how much they cheered when he made his yawning appearance on stage and how loudly they giggled during this particular scene, I got the feeling they all may have gone to the same school as the boy, but of course I have no way to say for sure. That would be my guess anyway. I know if it had been me on stage in front of a bunch of girls from my school, I would have been embarrassed beyond belief.

The Snowman film begins with the boy waking up and looking excitedly out of his window at the fresh snow, before frantically dressing (so hastily he forgets to put on underpants), and dashing out into his garden where he spends the entire day making his remarkably life-size snowman.

Well, this being a play with real people and not a hand drawn, smudgy animation, there was of course no way the actor boy would bare his buttocks or indeed anything else during this opening dressing scene, but I was amused and more than a little excited to see him really change his stripy pyjama bottoms for jeans behind the privacy of his near full-length dressing gown, his back turned strategically to the audience. I didn’t see him put on underpants so I assume he had them on all along.
The scene that followed at the end of the snowman building sequence, however, was played out a little differently.

Bed time… The boy’s bedroom set is pushed on stage around him as the lights fade from daytime to evening and in walks his mother, carrying his blue and white stripy pyjamas draped over her arm.

It all happened so quickly and so suddenly I could barely register what I was seeing right there under the spotlight before it was over. This time, without the screen of the boy’s dressing gown — for he simply changed clothes and was promptly tucked into bed — the mother reached out, took hold of his shirt and jumper and lifted up, pulling them both right off with the boy raising his arms up cooperatively. The next second, now bare-chested, the boy undid his own jeans and to audible giggling from the group of girls (and my own astonishment, not to mention extreme titillation), dropped them to his ankles, exposing himself from head to toe in nothing but a pair of skimpy, gleaming white briefs (gleaming impossibly white under the bright theatre lights).

I could scarcely believe what I was seeing in a theatre in the 21st century, but I was certainly not complaining. Neither were the girls! Putting aside the context and construct of the play, we had effectively just witnessed a boy strip right down to his underpants in public before rapidly stepping into the pyjama bottoms held out for him by the mother and jumping quickly into bed, pulling on his pyjama top as he went. I’m sure in front of those girls, potentially even his classmates, he couldn’t get into bed fast enough that night!

Soon after I became awkwardly aware I was now completely stiff and straining at the confines of my own briefs and remained so for much of the rest of the play. It really didn’t help that at several other times I was able to just about notice the boy’s underwear showing ever so faintly through his pyjamas! I knew from first hand experience that briefs in 2002, particularly white briefs, were near enough the most embarrassing underpants for a boy of twelve to be seen in, acting in a play or not. Hell, I bet they still are today!

[Freesub]

I'm certain white briefs will always remain the most embarassing underwear for a boy to be caught in!
I remember dropping them from my wardrobe entirely after being accidentally caught in just white briefs by a female cousin and being teased mercilessly about the visible outline of my privates. All briefs were dark coloured after that day!

[TeenFan]

The only example i could find of an actor doing full frontal nudity, under the age of 18, is when Daniel Radcliffe starred in "Equus".
I did a short online search, but found no other references to underage actors in a stage play. There must have been some such
performances, but any such records have been perhaps wiped out by the international morality police.

Young actors doing naked scenes in movies has also nearly completely vanished. Used to be very common from the 1970s through the 90s
in European films. A few examples in US movies can be found, such as "Angela" filmed in 1995.