What's in a Dame: Has pantomime gone full-on gay?

Pardon my Yankee if I speak in vague terms and mumble a lot in this post, because over here in the States "pantomime" means "those people in Washington Square park who pretend they're in an invisible box and ruin a perfectly good Dean and Deluca picnic lunch".

Over in the UK, "pantomime" refers to an increasingly gay theatrical tradition of exceedingly camp productions that involve a lot of wholesome sexual innuendo, men in drag, and a skewering of classic tales. The productions are apparently quite popular around Christmastime (there are currently several in the works, including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Aladdin) and are something of a national pastime, from what I can tell.

We'd reported earlier on gay matinee idol John Barrowman starring in Aladdin this season, and now it seems that Sir Ian McKellen may be joining the production in drag. Taking this with the fact that gay luminaries like Stephen Fry, Mark Ravenhill (best known for his scathing play, Shopping and F*cking) and Jonathan Harvey have been brought on to write these family-friendly pieces, many have begin to wonder if this tradition of putting men in dresses and camping it up with lots of ribald sexual double-talk has something gay about it.

Um ... yes?

Not for nothin', but that kind of Christmas production makes our chorus-boy-strewn Rockette-fest at Radio City look like a Larry the Cable Guy special. Can any Brit readers shed some light on the Panto phenom? Is this something that American entertainment needs to get on quick and ruin, like Coupling?