London Theatre Research Articles

Visual Art as Celebrity Memoir: The Paradox of Peg Woffington’s Sick-bed Portrait

ABSTRACTMargaret Woffington (1717?–1760) was one of the most popular actresses on the eighteenth-century English stage. She initially made her name in breeches roles, and as a versatile comedian, but would later re-train in classical tragedy. Brilliant and beautiful, she was discovered in 1730s Ireland, then blazed a trail through the London theatre scene until 1757 when she suffered a stroke while performing in As You Like It. Woffington never returned to the stage but lingered, bed-ridden, until her death in 1760. Throughout the 1750s and 1760s she was subject to titillating gossip and highly fictionalised memoirs that depicted her as a prostitute. While considering the aesthetic debate around sensibility described by Diderot in his famous Paradoxe sur le comédien, I look at how visual art might offer an alternative reading of this actress’s life—indeed, how portraiture can be considered a genre of life-writing because it offered actresses an opportunity to shape their images for public consumption (a relatively new phenomenon in the eighteenth century). Here I focus on an unusual portrait, Peg Woffington in Bed (circa 1758), by an unknown artist, arguing that this intimate scene was a shrewd autobiographical performance that brought the actress in line with a more sentimental age. A curious mixture of private and public, the painting not only affirms Woffington’s status as a formidable tragedienne but expunges perceived sexual misdeeds through the power of emotion.

Tale of Loss & Personal Ruin in Response to Time of Crisis in Selected Plays by Christopher Shinn & Jon Robin Baitz

Dying City by Christopher Shinn, an American playwright, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London 2006. Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, also an American playwright, premiered at Off-Broadway in January 2011. Both plays deal with Iraqi war in apolitical way. However, Dying City puts into focus conflicting identities as a result of social and political context that threatens individuals’ agency and concepts about themselves. Meanwhile, Other Desert Cities investigates domineering paternal relationships that produce passive/docile subjects. This study demonstrates that individuals’ agency and identity could be affected by domination relationship, limiting individuals’ choices and eliciting rebellion. This is undertaken by investigating characters’ ability to resist hegemonic relationships and endure controversial war debate. Characters’ subordination and resistance are also discussed. However, Shinn and Baitz’s aims are not to deal with the war but to underline its influence on personal relationships.

Some remarks about Betrayal. A new incarnation of Harold Pinter’s play at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London

The Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture. New Series » 9 (1/2019) » Some remarks about Betrayal. A new incarnation of Harold Pinter’s play at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London A A A

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel ed. by Colin Timms and Bruce Wood

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel ed. by Colin Timms and Bruce Wood

Eunuchs in London Theatre

Eunuchs in London Theatre Anne Greenfield (bio) “. . . and one may say of Eunuchs the same that is usually said of Bastards, that for the most part they are very bad, but that sometimes we may chance to find one that may prove good for something.” Charles Ancillon, Eunuchism Display’d, 11 Charles Ancillon does not mince words when it comes to “eunuchs,” and in his authoritative treatise on the subject (see figure 1), he insists that castrated males are typically “awkward,” possessed with a “Sourness and Moroseness of Temper,” “impious. . . . always fierce and ill natured,” and “fearful.”1 Ancillon divides castrated males into three main categories: those who were born that way, those with both penis and testicles removed, and those with only the vein between body and testicles removed. Ancillon is complimentary of none of them, and he has no qualms about generalizing. In fact, if we take Ancillon at his word, disdain for castrated men was quite ubiquitous: “History informs us, that [the public] not only utterly despised and hated, but that they could not abide so much as to see [eunuchs].”2 [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Charles Ancillon, Eunuchism Display’d © British Library Board, 1081.i.21, title page. [End Page 2] In English theatres, however, the notoriety associated with castrated men was complicated, and sometimes it was even replaced with respect and praise. As this essay shows, in the decades surrounding the turn of the eighteenth century, there emerged a corpus of at least twenty-five productions featuring eunuchs, most of which were set in Turkish, Persian, or Indian royal courts (see table 1 for a list).3 While the sheer frequency of these Orientalist eunuch depictions is notable, even more striking is the versatility and complexity with which dramatists constructed these characters. Unlike some of the other “stock” characters found in these Orientalist productions—like mutes or janissaries who come on stage as icons of execution and war (respectively)—eunuchs were represented quite variously. These plays feature eunuchs who were powerful military generals, spiteful schemers, loyal confidants, pitiful sex objects, and more. This variety in depiction is particularly surprising when compared to popular views of castrated men at the time, which often reduced them to their sexual status and dismissed them as odious or perverse. In the hands of English dramatists, eunuchs proved far more than the medical curiosities and sexual deviants they were represented as being in the pages of Ancillon’s treatise. Thus, this essay illustrates the remarkable disparity between attitudes toward eunuchs in life versus art, underscoring the degree of complexity, variety, and—at times—respect underlying Orientalist theatrical depictions of eunuchs. Not only were eunuchoid characters represented in strikingly diverse ways in scripts, but these roles were also played by a heterogeneous group of actors and even actresses. And even though responses to these characters sometimes overlapped with and echoed responses to other castrated men in art (most commonly, Italian castrati), these characters were also powerfully shaped and understood in light of their Orientalist settings and contexts. This analysis of eunuchs on the London stage not only underscores how better to interpret this substantial body of plays, but more importantly it calls attention to the unique ways the English public delighted in, understood, and responded to these sexual and geographical Others—when onstage. [End Page 3] The Stigma of Castration As popular and authoritative as Ancillon’s treatise on eunuchs was, he was hardly alone in stigmatizing castrated males. Other writers, particularly in the burgeoning field of medical treatises in the eighteenth century, show agreement on the matter. For example, Pierre Dionis writes, in his General Treatise of Midwifery (1719), for Eunuchs are shunn’d and despis’d by all Mankind, not only as good for nothing, but of a disagreeable Aspect, that bodes no good where-ever they come: and even in a Hen-house, Capons and Pullets are chas’d up and down, and peck’d by all other Fowls, that have an Aversion to them, tho they know not what moves them to it. Thus, by the Appointment and Instinct of Nature, every Animal that cannot engender, or bring...

The Translator on Stage by Geraldine Brodie

Reviewed by: The Translator on Stage by Geraldine Brodie Melanie Dreyer-Lude (bio) Geraldine Brodie. The Translator on Stage. New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2018. Pp. viii + 195. $29.95. Geraldine Brodie’s The Translator on Stage offers an in-depth and carefully researched examination of the relationship between the translation process and artistic practice on the contemporary London stage. Given the continuing debate surrounding translation (is this cultural appropriation?), the play that results (does it pass the speakability test?), and the professional value of translation practice (will it count toward tenure?), Brodie’s investigation provides a refreshing perspective. Brodie focuses her book on translation in production, identifying what we can learn about linguistic signification, cultural context, power structures, and economics. She carefully examines the composition of production teams, asking: Where does the translation process start? Who contributes to the construction of the translated text? Who can claim authorship once the play has reached the stage? She considers power dynamics by exposing when, where, and how translators are included or excluded in the construction of new, newly translated, and adapted work. Theoretically framed and well researched, the primary data supporting Brodie’s investigation comes from the field, specifically eight productions in the London professional theatre during the 2005 season. All of the plays considered in this book were translated from another language into British English. [End Page 143] In addressing her reasoning for the structure of her investigation, Brodie states “My research and discussions reflect the shifting nature of the subject itself; theatre translation is a field of mutability and sometimes unexpected liminality. It is also very exciting” (13). This book is not primarily a theoretical text. Brodie is concerned with the agency of the translator and the impact of power positioning on the final translation product. The composition of the creative team will necessarily shape and guide the translation process, one that is variant and particular to cultural context both geographic and economic. In order to examine translation agency, Brodie limits the field of independent factors. By selecting mainstream London theatres and one production season, she narrows the breadth of her investigation, allowing for more depth in her research. Using archival material and interviews with participating artists, Brodie investigates three modes of translation: direct translation (from source language to target language), literal translation (a non-interpreted, dramaturgically based translation used as a reference document), and indirect translation (a translation created by a non-native speaker using a literal translation as the source text). Using these frames, Brodie considers whether literal translators are considered hired guns or significant members of the creative team. She investigates correlations between the direct translation process and that of the indirect translator regarding issues of cultural tension. She considers the degree to which economic pressures influence the selection of translated texts and the shape of the final text used in production. Does a literal translation have a life beyond its function as a reference document, or it is merely a “disposable commodity”? (152). “My aim was to map the processes of translation, attempting to identify the choices and positions of the agents, in order to assess the extent to which the interplay of the personal and the collective is demonstrable in theatrical translation, as a theoretical concept, but also as a perceptible activity” (155). Each of the eight productions Brodie examines cover a substantial range of time: “from commission to performance” (13). In the first section of her book, Brodie creates an overview of the field of translation, locates the act of translation within the context of dramatic texts, and creates a summary of the productions and the artistic teams for each. Section 2 offers an in-depth discussion of each of the sites of investigation, providing an overview of each theatre, as well as the role each institution plays in the London theatre community. There are two useful tables which identify sources of revenue, and provide a reference for her discussion regarding the influence of box office receipts on the translation process. She shifts from an examination of the production site to the specific texts in section 3. Here she reveals the mechanisms of each production, detailing the process of selecting the text, the roles...

Metropolitan Songs and Songsters: Ephemerality in the World City

Metropolitan Songs and Songsters:Ephemerality in the World City Ian Newman (bio) and Gillian Russell (bio) introduction this special issue on "song and the city" attempts to open up the category of song for the study of the Romantic period by detaching it from associations with bards and minstrels and placing it within an urban context.1 One of our ambitions is to uncouple song from its near cognate, ballad—a term that has proven fertile ground for the discussion of literary Romanticism and its embrace of the popular, but one whose complex associations, including those of the popular itself, have become increasingly intractable. Our focus on song rather than ballads is, as we will discuss, partly an attempt to expand the purview of what gets included in discussions of popular literature, while also recognizing the global systems of commerce and imperialism that helped disseminate cultural products such as songs and other forms of literature.2 The relationship of songs to these systems, the essays in this special issue will argue, constituted a distinctive aspect of metropolitan culture in the Romantic period. By metropolitan we mean primarily London—and, as James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin have pointed out, by the turn of the 19th century, London was well established as a world city. In 1800 London housed nearly a million inhabitants, the largest city in Europe, with a population double that of Paris. In the next fifty years London's population doubled, despite death rates exceeding birth rates. It grew, that is, because of the vast movement of bodies to London from elsewhere.3 What resulted was a new form of [End Page 429] urban life, characterized by a fractious cosmopolitanism and a dizzying modernity. To contemporary writers, London was indescribable and cacophonous; a modern Babylon that was everywhere and nowhere.4 While other urban contexts are important in the history of song—the capitals of Edinburgh and Dublin as well as industrial towns such as Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield—London was unique in that its cultural representations continually insisted on its worldliness. Romantic London was a city that defined itself through its contact with distant others. London was also a city that understood itself through a particular relationship to song. Writers describing the metropolis defined the era as "this song singing Age."5 People living there in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries recognized that they were part of a robust culture of song. Song emanated from churches, palaces, theaters, private drawing rooms, pleasure gardens, taverns, alehouses, brothels, boats, ships, carriages, markets, fairs, and streets. Until this basic fact has been more thoroughly digested, we cannot hope to fully understand what, for example, William Blake meant by naming his most famous collections "Songs of Innocence and Experience," or what John Keats meant by talking about his relationship with George Felton Matthew as a "Brotherhood in Song." Until we have apprehended the culture of song in the period, we cannot hope to understand any of the many references to poetry as song in the Romantic period, which have become so familiar as to be almost invisible.6 Nor for that matter will we be able to fully appreciate the scenes of singing in the novels of Jane Austen or Frances Burney, or the social function of song as it appears in the countless comic afterpieces performed in London theaters, or—in a different mode—the riotous presence of song in works such as Pierce Egan's Life in London (1820). In much scholarship of the period, particularly literary scholarship, song has tended to become subsumed into the category of ballad. And indeed, the relationship between the ballad and Romantic poetry has been the subject of frequent and lively interrogation, most notably with book-length studies by Steve Newman, and Maureen N. McLane devoted to the subject.7 It has frequently been observed that the ballad, operating just outside [End Page 430] the domain of the legitimately literary, has helped constitute the study of literature as a discipline, demarcating lines of inclusion and exclusion in often productive ways. Scholars have noted that Francis James Child, the first professor of English (as opposed to belles lettres) at Harvard, is best...

Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture ed. by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman

Reviewed by: Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture ed. by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman Andrew Pink Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture. Edited by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. [xxvi, 249 p. ISBN 978-0-198-81242-5. £55] This book of essays springs from a two-day conference held at Kings College, London in 2014, part of the "Music in London 1800–1851" project funded by the European Research Council and led by Roger Parker, the Kings College Thurston Dart Professor of Music. For those with an interest in British musical life of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries the name of Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) will be familiar not only as a prolific and popular autodidact songwriter and composer (and librettist) of theatre works but also as an actor, entrepreneur, impresario, author, and journalist. And yet today he may be regarded as one of the period's best-known unknowns, despite having extensive entries in both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Jon A. Gillespie 2004, rev. 2014) and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Roger Fiske and Irena Cholij 1992, rev. 2001). But, for all his contemporary popularity and subsequent scholarly esteem, his music remains largely unperformed except for his patriotic naval song Tom Bowling, orchestrated by Henry Wood (1869–1944) and a 'BBC Last Night of the Proms' favourite. Part of the problem for Dibdin's reputation is that earlier commentators have relied almost entirely for their material on Dibdin's own autobiographical and journalistic writing with little direct reference to his artistic output and others' observations. These autobiographical and journalistic works, as the editors point out in the first chapter—"Introducing Mr Dibdin"—were highly selective in design, meant to present "the authoritative 'public' Dibdin" (p. 3), and as a result, he has been "ill-served by [. . .] academic enquiry" (p. 3), a situation the book seeks to redress. Following this expository chapter, the book is divided into three parts comprising a series of essays, "guest interludes", and an "afterword". I must confess to having found this plan a rather fussy concept; "chapter" in all cases would have sufficed. Part One 'Dibdin in Context' Chapter 2, "Mungo Here, Mungo There: Dibdin and Racial Performance" by Felicity Nussbaum discusses Dibdin's celebrated blackface role as the enslaved African Mungo, the main character in Dibdin's own "opera buffa" The Padlock (1768). There is some informative discussion of Dibdin's use of music to heighten the text. While Nussbaum helpfully places The Padlock in the context of Dibdin's several other stage works that also deal with racial and sexual/gendered captivity, as well as his other writings on slavery, she does not attempt in any meaningful way to link Dibdin's output with the abolition debates that swirled throughout the period. Nussbaum does however conclude that while Dibdin probably did abhor the cruel treatment of slaves he probably did not regard slavery as inherently abhorrent (pp. 39–40). Chapter 3, "Dibdin at the Royal Circus" by Michael Burden is a study of Dibdin's involvement (1782–84; 1785) with the setting up of this widely-known but little written-about south London theatre venue, its origins, its design, its collaborative management team, and its novel programming that mixed equestrian spectacle and musical theatre with child actors. A number of these children were the offspring of well-established London stage-folk, enrolled in the Royal Circus's own acting school. As we might expect from the pen of a senior figure in the world of theatre studies, the piece is informed by an assiduous attention to primary source material and historical antecedent. It is a shame, however, that there was not more to say about the acting school and its eventual demise. Also, with the attention given to topographical details, I would have liked a map to show the location. [End Page 304] Interlude 1, "Dibdin and Robert Bloomfield: Voicing the Clown in Town" by Katie Osborn presents us with some examples of Dibdin's use of rural characters and dialect in his stage works and songs, drawing our attention to use of...

Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method by Barry R. Clarke

Reviewed by: Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method by Barry R. Clarke MacDonald P. Jackson (bio) Barry R. Clarke. Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare: A New Attribution Method. New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019, xxix + 310, pp. $271.00; $58.99. isbn: 978-0-367-13782-3 (HB); isbn: 978-0-367-22544-5 (PB). To quote the summary inside the front cover, this book advocates a “paradigm shift . . . away from a single-author theory of the Shake-speare work towards a many-hands theory.” There must, however, be few “orthodox scholars” who nowadays believe that every play in the First Folio of 1623 is by Shakespeare alone. It is widely accepted that playwrights besides Shakespeare contributed to 1 Henry VI (Thomas Nashe and at least one other), Titus Andronicus (George Peele), Timon of Athens (Thomas Middleton), and Henry VIII or All Is True (John Fletcher), and also to Pericles (George Wilkins) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (Fletcher), both excluded from the Folio. The New Oxford Shakespeare more controversially detects Marlowe’s hand in all three Parts of Henry VI and argues for minor adaptation by Middleton of Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well. It names Shakespeare as part- author of Edward III and (most contentiously of all) Arden of Faversham, each published in anonymous quartos. Clarke knows most of this (47–48), but his “many hands” include more contributors to more plays, and he rejects current attributions to “single authors” even of scenes and sequences believed to make up their shares in a play-script. Before elaborating, I should explain that Clarke calls “the man from Stratford” “Shakspere,” reserving “Shakespeare” for the published works (xviii), while, to no obvious purpose, the hyphenated “Shake-speare” also appears sporadically. Hence the variant spellings in my quotations from Clarke’s book. Within wording of my own the traditional “Shakespeare” is used. [End Page 364] Regarding the famous “upstart crow” allusion in Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit as indicating that Shakespeare “was a play broker” who claimed as “all his own work” other men’s plays to which he had merely “added lines,” Clarke finds the writing of Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe, and Anthony Munday in 3 Henry VI (91) and states that its “O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!” (Riverside, 1.4.137) “might be the only line that we can be sure Shakspere ever wrote” (88). He sees signs of Nashe and, as reviser, Thomas Heywood in The Comedy of Errors; of Nashe and, as possible revisers, Heywood and Thomas Dekker, in Love’s Labor’s Lost; and of Francis Bacon in both those comedies plus Twelfth Night and The Tempest (126, 141, 163, 187). Clarke discloses that some years ago he held the view that the Shakespeare canon was created by “Francis Bacon . . . alone under the pseudonym Shakespeare” (8 n.5), and a large part of the present book is occupied with rehearsing the standard anti-Stratfordian arguments. We are told, for instance, that “The extant documents for the actor William Shakspere reveal him to be an entrepreneur in the London theatre world, as well as a money-lender, a dealer in malt, and a property speculator. However, there is no evidence that he had access to the books that are known to have provided background material for some of the Shakespeare plays” (13); further, apart from “six surviving William Shakspere signatures, which are inconsistent, there is no record of his handwriting. No original Shakespeare manuscript for a sonnet or play has ever been found” (22). Clarke concedes that no autograph manuscripts exist of plays or poems by several other writers of the time, but, oddly, includes in his list two playwrights for whom they do: Heywood (The Captives and The Escapes of Jupiter) and Middleton (A Game at Chess). Like most anti-Stratfordians, he makes no attempt to rebut the case, which in my view is overwhelming, that “Hand D’s” insurrection scene added to the British Library manuscript play Sir Thomas More was both conceived and penned by Shakespeare. Clarke tortures the sense of passages in the Parnassus plays...

Tourism, creative industries, and (youth) subcultures in the UK

If we consider the aspects of British culture that might be expected to appeal most to tourists, what are the first things to come to mind? Conventionally it has been attractions such as ancient castles and pretty old cottages, beautiful coastlines and countryside, the Royal Family and ‘British tea time’. Many tourists also visit the museums, galleries and theatres of London and other big cities. Popular culture is also a driver for tourism in the UK, and is attracting fans of movies and television shows such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Doctor Who, keen to visit filming locations and theme parks. Some tourists wish to connect with the history of Britain’s music and youth (sub)cultures, and can explore, for example, the legacies of the Beatles and the ‘Swinging Sixties’, or the sights and sounds of punk rock. Visitors from overseas can also immerse themselves in the UK’s contemporary art, music and fashion cultures - at festivals and nightclubs, in shops and markets, and on ‘street culture’ tours - and these types of experience are growing in importance and prominence in Britain’s tourism economy. This article, then, will examine the evolving relationship between tourism, the creative industries, and youth/subcultures in the UK, and consider some of the arguments and issues arising from it, such as the extent to which this might be considered a positive and sustainable development.

Дьявол на сцене «Белл Сэвидж»: эпизод антитеатральной полемики в Англии XVI–XVII вв.

<p>В статье рассмотрены исторический, культурный и религиозный контекст легенды о дьяволе, внезапно появившемся на сцене лондонского театра (в наиболее известном случае — трактира «Белл Сэвидж»). Авторы предлагают анализировать ее в рамках общего исследования театральной полемики XVI — первой половины XVII вв. с ее взаимовлиянием литературных жанров. Традиция связывать происхождение театра с дьявольскими силами отчасти подпитывается через восприятие актеров и зрителей как вольных или невольных слуг «альтернативной иерархии», восходящей к дьяволу — однако важна и интерпретация «дьявола на сцене» как предупреждения о необходимости покаяния.</p>

‘My aunt was always doing wild things’: the long-term impact of Dartington Theatre Training on theatre and community in south-east London 1978–2017

‘“My aunt was always doing wild things”’ traces the ongoing ripple effect of a question posed by Dartington College in a submission to the Council of Europe in 1983 for a week-long seminar on Theatre and Communities: ‘What contribution can theatre practice make to the welfare of the community in which it occurs?’ By focusing on one point of radical theatre practice happening within a south London Care Home for older people in 2017 the article seeks to describe ways in which the ecology and pedagogy of Dartington College in the 1970s and 1980s continues to have direct influence on a network of artists and creative producers working in south-east London 40 years later. The paper outlines the innovate practices that underpinned the development of Dartington’s four-year Theatre Language course (1978–1985), notably the skills used to negotiate and establish sustained relationships between theatre, people and place. It illustrates how the processes of unlearning and not-knowing supported Theatre Language students to engage openly with the complexity of real contexts.

Performing Heteroglossia: The Translating Theatre Project in London

London is home to more than eight million people, who speak more than three hundred languages, but the representation of this cultural richness and diversity in the theatre of the British capital is far from adequate. London theatre remains predominantly white, British, and middle-class, and performances use the standard London dialect and accent combination. In the first part of this article, I offer a contextualization and classification of types of heteroglossia available to London theatregoers. In the second part, I describe my research project “Translation, Adaptation, Otherness: ‘Foreignisation’ in Theatre Practice.” The aim of the project was to investigate new strategies in theatre translation that would enable us to disrupt audience expectations and challenge ethnocentrism. In the present article, I assess the difficulties we encountered and audiences’ responses to our experiments. The project offered many timely opportunities to interrogate perceptions of “foreignness” among London-based theatre makers, scholars, and spectators immediately following the Brexit referendum vote.

« Ce n’est pas un livre, mais une pièce de théâtre… » : la lecture de Harry Potter et l’enfant maudit par les utilisateurs du réseau social littéraire Babelio

“It’s not a book, it’s a play… ”: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Read by the Users of Babelio, a Social Network for Book Readers. On the 31st of July 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a play written by Jack Thorne in collaboration with J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany, was performed for the first time at the Palace Theatre in London. On the same day, the bookshops of Great Britain were literally invaded by the young wizard’s fans, whom were curious to know what happens next to their favorite heroes. Thereby, The Cursed Child is a play, not only to be performed, but also – and mostly – to be read. Whereas the Theater Studies, at least in France, consider the drama text mainly as a scenic performance element and thus, limits the drama text reading to text analysis, the reception of Thorne’s play allows to ask about the possibility of reading the drama text as a self-sufficient fictional text and invites us to investigate the specificities of this kind of reading. In order to do this, I have analyzed three hundred Cursed Child readers’ reviews, which are located on the babelio.com website, one of the biggest French social networks for book readers. It appears that the Cursed Child’s readers tend to read that drama text by comparing it to the seven Harry Potter novels. The main two differences perceived within the scope of this comparison (and which the readers often tend to attribute to the dramatic form specificities) are the so-called lack of descriptions and the rapid reading rhythm. However, these differences may receive a completely opposite evaluation, depending on the reader’s openness to the dramatic form. In this way, for the “reluctant” readers, it constitutes an obstacle which prevents the fictional immersion and therefore the pleasure of reading, whereas for the “enthusiastic” readers, it allows them to go through a new and pleasant experience. Moreover, it is not unusual to see that the reading of The Cursed Child markedly reduces the reader’s reluctance towards the dramatic form. In fact, the reader reviews analysis proves that The Cursed Child text activates the reader’s imagination, regardless of his reluctance. Consequently, the Thorne’s drama example demonstrates that a drama text can be considered as a self-sufficient fictional text which is able to arouse the pleasure of reading and we can therefore conclude that the reluctance or the pleasure is led by the reader’s own readiness to accept the alterity of the dramatic form.

Enlightening the Marginalised: John Thelwall and the Value of Laughter

Among the most influential radical orators of his day (though neglected by critics until recent years), John Thelwall’s lectures reveal a carefully focused wit, one which spoke to artisan and labouring class concerns in the taverns and lecture halls of London. This essay examines Thelwall’s use of humour as a means by which the politically marginalised might be educated and informed, considering the role of his perception of the value of laughter in the construction of his political arguments. The universality of laughter, common to all sections of society rich or poor, made it the perfect tool with which to undermine inequitable political narratives and ideas, allowing those on the peripheries of political debate to make themselves heard. By first examining the roots of Thelwall’s approach to writing humorous material (particularly in his early experiences in the London theatre houses), the essay goes on to investigate the subtle and innovative techniques he used to ridicule the establishment, focusing particularly on the series of political lectures he delivered between 1794 and 1795. Thelwall’s humour, his attempts to provoke laughter from his listeners, provide an invaluable insight into the way in which he sought not only to address the concerns of his audience, but to guide their response to political realities.

7. Jimi Hendrix: London Life in the 60's

If you count back, 50 years since the Summer of Love of 1967 has passed. It has also been 50 years since Jimi Hendrix famously opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with his rendition of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's title track, which was released just three days previous, all while The Beatles sat in the audience. This is the same summer when his first album, Are You Experienced? spent 33 weeks on the charts and Hendrix set fire to his guitar at the Monterey Pop festival. I spent 12 weeks in Brighton, England learning about Hendrix and the London that he lived in. I had the opportunity to interview interesting characters and work with primary texts, but the main source I worked with is a newspaper call the International Times, most commonly known as IT. IT was known for its 'police baiting' small ads page, making this an incredibly interesting primary source to work with. In this project, I examined the Summer of Love, Hendrix and IT newspaper through the lenses of sexism, racism and consumerism, exposing areas where the hippies in swinging London were not as progressive as they thought. Using examples from IT, Hendrix’s life and texts from the 60’s, my project aims to highlight how instances of sexism, racism and consumerism occurred within the hippie community. In London, hippies were unable to reach unified ideas and maintained some oppressive tendencies from the dominant culture they so wished to reject.

Introduction: Shaw in Performance

Introduction: Shaw in Performance

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel. Ed. by Colin Timms and Bruce Wood

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel. Ed. by Colin Timms and Bruce Wood

Two Women Walk into a Theatre Bathroom: The Fanny and Stella Trials as Trans Narrative

Two Women Walk into a Theatre BathroomThe Fanny and Stella Trials as Trans Narrative Simon Joyce (bio) Two well-dressed women are taken into custody shortly after one of them uses the restroom in a theatre, and both are charged with disturbing the peace. Taken to the police station in the company of a male companion who offers to vouch for them, they are stripped as a way of proving police suspicions that both women were assigned male at birth. They are subjected to an invasive medical examination and as a result have felony accusations of solicitation to commit sodomy added to the original misdemeanour charge. Men come forward, including one who claims to have been tricked about their gender and admits to trying to publicly expose them. The police find letters in which the defendants refer to themselves by female pronouns and to each other as sisters; there is evidence that one may have considered herself as married to a man. The mother of one of the defendants asserts that she has presented as female since the age of six; she and the other defendant’s father have each bought dresses for their children, who identify themselves professionally as actresses. One major newspaper uses feminine pronouns throughout its trial coverage. Medical experts for the defence dispute the prosecution claim of physical evidence of sodomy, and, in less than an hour, the jury finds them innocent of the felony counts and guilty only of the original misdemeanour. Exceptional details aside, this is a story that we might read in our newspapers today. Many of its components feel familiar: an arrest made on the basis that a visit to the bathroom constituted a violation of a private, gendered space; an attempt at public exposure by a man who felt deceived about the anatomy of a companion and acted out in a transphobic rage; an assumption that a trans woman in public must be a sex worker soliciting clients; a supportive network of friends and relatives who affirmed the women’s gender identities through appropriate pronoun use and gifts of clothing, recognizing a process of social transition that had begun in childhood. Some readers might recognize a legal decision that is unsympathetic to prosecutorial overreach and more apt to see gender presentation as a matter of private concern than one requiring legal policing. It would certainly be heartening to see a newspaper make an unequivocal statement that it would use the gender pronouns with which a criminal defendant referred to herself. Overall, the case could be seen as a qualified victory for transgender rights. But it happened in Victorian Britain. [End Page 83] It is the case of Fanny and Stella, who were arrested at the Strand Theatre in London in April 1870, charged under the birth names William Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, respectively, and acquitted of felony charges the following May. Despite its many progressive elements, the trial pitted two narratives against each other, viewing Fanny and Stella either as theatrical female impersonators or as gay men—but clearly, either way, as men. Little modern writing on the case puts much stock in the first of these, which proved to be the winning argument in court.1 It is far more common, and thus rather disturbing, to find commentators who essentially side with the prosecution by situating Fanny and Stella in the history of Victorian homosexuality as the missing link between the mollie-house culture of the Regency period and the forms of modern male homosexuality that we have come to see as emerging around the Oscar Wilde trial in 1895.2 It is fitting, then, that the majority of the critics and historians that I am about to summarize directly link Fanny and Stella to Wilde, viewing their prosecution as in many ways a trial run for his. Wilde’s sentence—based on the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885—thus comes to seem like the penalty paid for the apparent laxity of the law as it stood in 1871. A recent history of male homosexuality in the nineteenth century, H.G. Cocks’s Nameless Offences (2010), suggests that the interpretation of Fanny and Stella “has gone...

Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage by Sara Soncini

Reviewed by: Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage by Sara Soncini Amanda Dawson Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage. By Sara Soncini. University of Exeter Press, 2015. Cloth $100.00, Paper $35.00. xvii + 295 pages. Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage (2015) by Sara Soncini is a monograph that considers how contemporary wars are presented on the British stage. This book investigates plays, playwrights, productions, and the strategies they deploy in responding to contemporary wars and issues of representation through storytelling and performance. The book posits a correlation between real-world conflict and how it is represented on stage, assessing the impact of theatre as a tool for understanding war and violence. Through a close reading of over twenty-five plays, Forms of Conflict investigates the cultural and political relevance of these plays. Moreover, the author seeks to answer questions of how theatre provides new ways of interpreting war in a world "enmeshed in permanent war" (xiii), and how new wars influence new forms of dramatic storytelling. Forms of Conflict makes a compelling argument that, just as the landscape of war is ever changing, so is the landscape of new war plays (post-9/11 conflicts). This in-depth look at new wars on the British stage is a welcome addition to scholarship on representations of war. Soncini looks at plays that highlight new techniques and insights on contemporary warfare and global representation. These scripts were written by British and British-based writers, and even a few non-British playwrights whose work premiered in the UK, including Caryl Churchill, Martin Crimp, Simon Stephens, and David Hare, among others. Some of the plays are well known while others remain unpublished. Soncini also attended productions, when possible, at [End Page 167] major theatres, as well as at smaller theatre companies. While the texts are Soncini's primary materials, she felt "more comfortable" discussing plays she saw in person or on video (xv). The monograph is divided into five chapters. In chapter 1, "Introduction: Mapping the Terrain," Soncini presents her argument about "new wars" in opposition to "old wars" (xiii). Old wars might simply be described as what is typically thought of as wars in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. "Old wars," Soncini writes, are in the "Clausewitzean modes of conflict," referencing Carl von Clausewitz and his foundational theories about war, published in On War in 1832 (xiii). New wars, on the other hand, are looser in definition, perhaps explained best as forms of organized violence, which is meant to include mass acts of violence and terrorism, such as the attacks of September 11, 2001. The plays investigated here were written and performed close to or after 9/11. Chapter 2, titled "This is Not a War," "sets out to fathom the reverberations of the increasingly virtual nature of contemporary wars on the visual and verbal textures of their dramatic reconfigurations" (19). In many of the plays discussed in this chapter, the visual, visceral imagery of war is absent, unlike in film as Soncini notes, where the violence of war is almost always present. This absence of war is not unusual in war plays at large, but is arguably more prevalent in contemporary war plays. For example, Soncini describes the 1997 production of Caryl Churchill's This is a Chair at the Royal Court Theatre in London, which began with a proj ection of a text reading "'The War in Bosnia,'" while the action on stage was of a man holding flowers as he waits for his date. This highlights Soncini's argument for how the fighting and violence of war serves as the backdrop or even the topic of the play, yet is not fully present. Soncini shifts her focus to documentary theatre in chapters 3 and 4 by engaging with playwright David Hare, a major figure in war-based theatre. Hare's 2002 article in the Guardian, "Why Fabulate?," provides the title for Soncini's third chapter, in which Hare questions whether fiction is the appropriate form for examining war. The chapter discusses documentary theatre and its reflections of reality by highlighting tribunal plays, which utilize official transcripts, such as...