Summer Theatre In London 1661 1820 And The Rise Of The Haymarket Theatre

A biography of the actor who starred in the popular television series, Family Ties, as well as in a number of motion pictures and who recently announced that he has Parkinson's disease.

This book sets out the political and cultural conditions regulating dramatic writing during an era of censorship and monopolistic royal theatres. Using a range of plays and manuscripts, it argues for the centrality of burletta, the theatrical locus of the attacks on the Cockney school of poetry and the vitality of the metropolitan dramatic scene.

The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre 1737-1832 provides a comprehensive guide to theatre of the Georgian era across the range of dramatic forms.

The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise to the American musical and later challenged its modern pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analysing the new forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to Oliver! (1960). One section of the book examines the contributions of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Les Misérables (1980). There is a consideration of "jukebox" musicals such as Mamma Mia! (1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as Billy Elliot (2005) are complemented by those on experimental musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera (2003) and London Road (2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical demonstrates not only the unique qualities of British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of British musicals today.

'I Hope I Don't Intrude' takes its title from the catch-phrase of the eponymous hero of the 1825 play Paul Pry, which was an immense success on the London stage and then rapidly in New York and around the English-speaking world. It tackles the complex, multi-faceted subject of privacy in nineteenth-century Britain by examining the way in which the tropes, language, and imagery of the play entered public discourse about privacy in the rest of the century. The volume is not just an account of a play, or of late Georgian and Victorian theatre. Rather it is a history of privacy, showing how the play resonated through Victorian society and revealed its concerns over personal and state secrecy, celebrity, gossip and scandal, postal espionage, virtual privacy, the idea of intimacy, and the evolution of public and private spheres. After 1825 the overly inquisitive figure of Paul Pry appeared everywhere - in songs, stories, and newspapers, and on everything from buttons and Staffordshire pottery to pubs, ships, and stagecoaches - and 'Paul-Prying' rapidly entered the language. 'I Hope I Don't Intrude' is an innovative kind of social history, using rich archival research to trace this cultural artefact through every aspect of its consumer context, and using its meanings to interrogate the largely hidden history of privacy in a period of major transformations in the role of the home, mass communication (particularly the new letter post, which delivered private messages through a public service), and the state. In vivid and entertaining detail, including many illustrations, David Vincent presents the most thorough account yet attempted of a recreational event in an era which saw a decisive shift in consumer markets. His study casts fresh light on the perennial tensions between curiosity and intrusion that were captured in Paul Pry and his catchphrase. Giving a new account of the communications revolution of the period, it re-evaluates the role of the state and the market in creating a new regime of privacy. And its critique of the concept and practice of surveillance looks forward to twenty-first-century concerns about the invasion of privacy through new technologies.

British Music and the French Revolution investigates the nature of British musical responses to the cataclysmic political events unfolding in France during the period of 1789–1795, a time when republican and royalist agendas were in conflict in both nations. While the parallel demands for social and political change resulted from different stimuli, and were resolved very differently, the 1790s proved to be a defining period for each country. In Britain, the combination of a protracted period of Tory conservatism, and the strong spirit of patriotism which swept the nation, had a profound influence on the arts. There was an outpouring of concert and theatrical music dealing with the French Revolution and the subsequent war with France. While patriotic songs might be expected when a country is at war, the number of recreations on the London stages of events taking place on the Continent may surprise. Initially, such topical subjects were restricted to the summer or “minor” theatres; however, government restrictions were relaxed after 1793, giving Londoners the opportunity to see topical theatre in the royal or “patent” theatres, as well. The resulting repertoire of plays and recreations (often propagandist in nature) made considerable use of music, and those performed in the “minor” theatres were all-sung. Consequently, there exists a large repertoire of music which has been little studied. British Music and the French Revolution investigates this repertoire within a social and political context. Initial chapters examine the historical relationship between France and Britain from a musical perspective, the powerful symbols of national identity in both countries, and the complex laws that governed commercial theatres in London. Thereafter, the materials are presented in a chronological fashion, starting with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération in 1790. The period of the Captivity was one of growing tension and fear in both France and Britain as war became an ever-increasing threat between the two nations. Two subsequent chapters examine the war years of 1793 until first half of 1795. The choice of a five-year period allows the reader to follow British musical reactions to the fall of the Bastille and subsequent events up to the rise of Napoléon.

From Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807 to his final defeat at Waterloo, the English theatres played a crucial role in the mediation of the Peninsular campaign. In the first in-depth study of English theatre during the Peninsular War, Susan Valladares contextualizes the theatrical treatment of the war within the larger political and ideological axes of Romantic performance. Exploring the role of spectacle in the mediation of war and the links between theatrical productions and print culture, she argues that the popularity of theatre-going and the improvisation and topicality unique to dramatic performance make the theatre an ideal lens for studying the construction of the Peninsular War in the public domain. Without simplifying the complex issues involved in the study of citizenship, communal identities, and ideological investments, Valladares recovers a wartime theatre that helped celebrate military engagements, reform political sympathies, and register the public’s complex relationship with Britain’s military campaign in the Iberian Peninsula. From its nuanced reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799), to its accounts of wartime productions of Shakespeare, description of performances at the minor theatres, and detailed case study of dramatic culture in Bristol, Valladares’s book reveals how theatrical entertainments reflected and helped shape public feeling on the Peninsular campaign.

"A richly entertaining account of tragic theatre accidents and murders most foul. If theatre walls could talk, what secrets would they reveal? Chris Wood provides fascinating answers with tales of brawling ushers, murderously jealous husbands, stampeding crowds and infant tragedies. A meticulously researched and vivid collection of lives lost in the palaces of dreams. A must-read for all lovers of the theatre, providing shocks and gasps of horror when real life proves to be more dramatic than any play on stage." - Hugh Bonneville "Immaculately researched and beautifully macabre. This is a real treat for anyone who is either a fan of the theatre or of untimely deaths. I loved it!" - Peter James Britain’s theatrical wonderland has been a cornerstone of culture for centuries, delighting and thrilling audiences with an assemblage of exhilarating spectacles. Beyond the trodden boards, and tucked neatly behind the curtain however, lies a catalogue of real life destruction and grisly murder that our greatest tragedians would surely be proud to have presided over. Tread the bloodied boards of Britain’s theaters and witness the deathly dramas that have played out so dramatically within them. Death in the Theatre collects an astonishing selection of startling tragedies from Britain’s throng of theaters. There is something especially staggering when the player exits life on their adorned stage, and yet, with this by no means an infrequent occurrence, death has made many a fearful cameo appearance – stalking the stalls and grimly reaping the galleries in its macabre and relentless fashion. In 1910 a strange midnight tragedy was enacted in a London theater, where the brutal murder of an elderly stage carpenter prompted huge excitement among the theater-going world and indeed wider public. How did a children’s magic show descend into such unspeakable horror that would leave 183 youngsters dead in a Sunderland theater, their tiny bodies brutally laid out in the dress circle for the bleakest of identity parades? Learn of outrageous tragedy such as the young man mauled to death by a lion in a Gloucester theater, and the unfortunate victim killed in the Dumfries Theatre Royal – quite literally – by the limelight.