Olympic Theatre Research Articles

Mediating Melodrama, Staging Sergeant Cuff

When Sergeant Cuff stepped off the page and onto the stage of the Olympic Theatre in Wilkie Collins’s 1877 adaptation of his own wildly successful novel, The Moonstone, he both joined the earliest ranks of the British stage detective and entered the world of melodrama. Though we might expect the rational figure of a detective such as Sergeant Cuff to be incompatible with the emotional excess of melodrama, in this article I show that such an assumption oversimplifies his relationship to melodramatic emotion and overlooks the surprising compatibility of the detective with melodrama’s epistemological and moral investments. I argue that in distinct contrast to the ambiguity and multiplicity instilled by the novel, Cuff allows for the clear resolution expected on the melodramatic stage, proving himself an agent of and for melodramatic style and substance.

The Theatrical Life and Death of Wych Street

In London’s Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century (1925), Errol Sherson describes Wych Street, located on the eastern periphery of the West End and within 200 metres of Drury Lane Theatre, as ‘one of the narrowest, dingiest and most disreputable thoroughfares the West End has ever known.’ By this time Wych Street had long disappeared, although its memory lingered. In a short story entitled ‘Where was Wych Street’ ( Strand Magazine, 1921), Stacy Aumonier attempted to recall the street’s existence and its significance. In the course of the story the street is identified in relation to two theatres – the Gaiety and the Globe – only the latter of which was connected to the street. Surprisingly, no reference is made to the Olympic Theatre with which Wych Street had been identified since the early nineteenth century or to the Opera Comique immediately adjacent to the Globe, highlighting the problematic role of memory in mapping historical space. This article examines the historical, theatrical and geographical mapping of Wych Street, bringing out contrasts, contradictions and paradoxes, and considering its role as part of the theatrical and extra-theatrical milieu of London.

Anatomical theatre place of Knowledge – the pivotal role of anatomist in its realization

Human anatomy dissection represented a cornerstone in the evolution of medicine and modern scientific thought. The anatomical theatres, some of which are considered true masterpieces of architecture, are the place where concretely men learned to know themselves with a scientific method. Anatomists had a pivotal role in the buildings of anatomical theatres, using their knowledge in the research process of more functional architectures for demonstrative and experimental science. Antonio Scarpa (1752-1832) is an emblematic figure in this scenario. He studied anatomy at the University of Padua in the oldest permanent anatomical theatre of the world, originate in 1594 from a joint project conceived by Paolo Sarpi, scientist and church reformer, and Hieronymus Fabricius Ab Aquapendente, anatomist. In 1772, Scarpa became professor at the University of Modena. Bearing witness to the architectural value of the theatre in Padua is the fact that in 1774 Scarpa, involved in the planning for an anatomical theatre in Modena, had the professor of surgery in Padua, Girolamo Vandelli, send him a wooden model of the theatre there. Another project, less expensive, was selected instead. Later, in 1783, Scarpa was made professor of anatomy at the University of Pavia and promptly he promoted the building of an anatomical theatre there. The building was concluded in 1785, its semicircular layout is modeled on ancient theatres and the Palladian Olympic Theatre of Vicenza. Today, most of the anatomical theatres are lost or forgotten. The Thesa project will provide a census of anatomical theatres, both survived and not, which will allow us to identify connections among them, among the anatomists who studied there and the mutual influences that characterize their form. We believe the achievement of these objectives defines the essential conditions necessary to regain full awareness of the value of anatomical theatres in both the academic and popular contexts, thus creating a fertile cultural basis for new initiatives that can continue the quest for knowledge undertaken in the past in these places. From an architectural and evocative perspective, they are and will remain places where man puts himself at the centre and at the same time observes himself.

Monitoring Of Complex Structure For Structural Control Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning (Tls) And Photogrammetry

The demand for high-definition surveys within cultural heritage-related projects represents one of the main factors that promoted the use of laser scanning technology and photogrammetry. By measuring millions of points within relatively short time periods, terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) allows to researchers to derive complete and very detailed three-dimensional (3D) models of real objects from acquired point clouds. These features drew in recent years the interest of surveyors, engineers, architects, and archaeologists towards the laser scanning technique as an invaluable surveying tool for 3D modeling of sites and artifacts of cultural heritage. A wide variety of objects, such as small pieces of pottery, statues, buildings, and large areas of archaeological sites, have been scanned and modeled for various purposes like preservation, reconstruction, study, and museum exhibitions. However, the use of TLS systems for stability control is still a research field not much investigated. In the view of in-depth investigation on this topic, a 3-years project has been established to evaluate the use of multiple surveying techniques for the stability control of a complex historical structure. To this aim, TLS, total station (TS) and photogrammetry are being employed for stability control monitoring with finite element model (FEM) analysis applied to an historical building, Teatro Olimpico (Olympic Theatre), in Vicenza, Italy. The main goal of this work is to analyze and verify the stability over time of this kind of structure by applying FEM analysis to a highly detailed 3D model of the theater. To date, three consecutive surveys of the theater have been carried out with consumer digital-reflex camera Nikon D200, a Leica Laser Scanner (HDS 3000) and a Leica Total Station (TCR 705). The first survey comprised approximately 250 pictures to derive a global and complete 3D model of theater with an inexpensive measuring and modeling photogrammetry software (Photomodeler). In the second study, the historical structure was fully surveyed with a TLS, the Leica HDS 3000, to produce a complete 3D model. A set of scans of complex elements, such as the wood trompe l'oeil onstage scenery, statues, and fine trim, were acquired in this stage. This article presents the results from the repeated surveys and highlights the issues and difficulties related to the laser scanning and photogrammetry of an unusual and complex geometry such as the one provided by the Olympic Theater in Vicenza.

The Madwoman Outside the Attic: Eavesdropping and Narrative Agency in The Woman in White

Frederick Walker's poster for the Olympic Theatre's 1871 dramatic adaptation of The Woman in White portrays a woman clothed in white who looks fearfully about her as she passes through a doorway or large, shuttered window. 1 The background's dark, starlit sky and the woman's frightened glance evoke a nighttime setting of mystery and suspense. The poster could represent any of several women in Wilkie Collins's 1860 novel The Woman in White: the first woman in white whom Walter Hartright and the reader encounter, later identified as Anne Catherick; Laura Fairlie, who, dressed in white as she walks on the terrace on the first evening of Walter's stay at Limmeridge House, possesses a striking resemblance to Anne; or as the black-and-white illustration suggests, a reversed image of Marian Halcombe as she embarks on her dangerous mission of aural surveillance in the middle of the narrative. The fact that the evocative woman of the title can refer to many of the text's female characters indicates the tenuousness of women's identities in the narrative. The ambiguity of the woman depicted and the fear she exhibits as she leaves a protected space reflect the novel's preoccupation with individual identity and with [End Page 303] the danger that women incur in leaving the spaces and activities deemed proper to them. 2 Eavesdropping--an improper activity on the border between inside and outside, private and public--figures transgression in the novel. An eavesdropper steals the secrets of private life and controls their dissemination in the public realm; by withholding or revealing people's secrets, the eavesdropper determines their social identity. In The Woman in White illicit overhearing reveals anxieties about the vexed relations between gender, identity, and narrative and social agency.

Artisan Melodrama and the Plebeian Public Sphere: The Political Culture of Drury Lane and Its Environs, 1797-1830

THIS ESSAY WILL EXAMINE NON-ROYAL PATENT THEATRE MELODRAMA artisan radical culture in the Drury Lane vicinity in the late 1810s early 1820s. It will show that contemporary melodramas, especially those written by William Thomas Moncrieff performed at the Olympic Theatre, Wych Street, Adelphi Theatre, Strand, have a cognatic relationship with London revolutionary politics. Popular melodrama was a manifestation of an increasingly self-confident artisan class in which the occupation of public spaces (streets, theatres taverns) articulated their distinctive plebeian public sphere embodied in personal political agency an active radical press. While this essay claims a high degree of specificity a robust historical methodology, it necessarily negotiates the contemporary aporias between culture literature which operated at this time. For the same reasons that state spying dogged radical activism, drama also fell under government scrutiny control. As Marc Baer has shown, spying on the 1809 Price riots at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, was controlled by Sir Richard Ford, a senior Bow Street magistrate whose father had held controlling capital in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.(1) Ford, effectively London's spymaster chief-of-police, managed surveillance to counter United Irish nationalism metropolitan ultraradicalism.(2) Not least, as Kenneth Johnston has proven, Ford also controlled the espionage dudes of William Wordsworth.(3) Amidst such vividly tantalizing promiscuities between the political the literary, it is important not to underestimate the pervasive, consistent invasive role of government control over symbolic expression. Although my essay will imply that there was a certain amount of successful surveillance avoidance, even mildly liberal discourses could be effectively banned from the stage. For example, the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays, the playwright George Colman the younger, in regulating the manuscript of The Castle of Wolfenstein, or, The Accusing Spirit in 1828 expunged the mildly liberal sentiments and in America you know the distinction of ranks are not so minutely marked as with us.(4) What was possible as utterance in poetry, prose or public speech was disallowed in the theatre, even in the years close to the Reform Bill. This sharp discursive asymmetry between street stage, magnified by the distinction between patent non-patent theatres, is a defining feature of the political culture of Drury Lane. One summer night in 1797 a government spy sent to Furnival's Inn Cellar, Strand, to monitor the London Corresponding Society's dialogue with United Irishmen, noted that the gathering of veteran Jacobins, disaffected Hackney writers Attorney's Clerks not only toasted `the immortal memory of Parker, late Commander of the floating Republic' but call'd for a of Beer which they term'd pot vowed it should be introduced every night ... they met. The exemplary execution of Nore mutiny ringleader Richard Parker swiftly deified him amongst ultra-radicals who also drank toasts to A speedy downfall to Spoony the third his Ministers Success to the Armies of Bounaparte.(5) Thirty three years later an irate theatre-goer wrote to the Home Office complaining about an atrocious inflammatory production of Douglas Jerrold's Mutiny at Spithead the Nore (1830) at the Royal Coburg Theatre just across the Thames from the Strand on the site of the present Old Vic. The writer considered Jerrold's play much more ... [dangerous] than Mr Hunt or W. Cobbetts harangues feared it would encourage [in]subordination in the Navy.(6) Curiously, Parker's pot had survived, transmogrified in Jerrold's play into a variation muddied by popular memory.(7) In Mutiny at ... the Nore's tableau ending (a visual freeze-frame typical of 1820s melodrama), Parker is given a glass of wine by the execution squad from which he drinks declaring, shipmates, hear the last toast of Richard Parker:--`Here's a health to my king, God bless him! …

F. S. Chanfrau's Mose: The Rise and Fall of an Urban Folk-Hero

On the evening of 15 February 1848, Francis S. Chanfrau, a stock actor at Mitchell's Olympic Theatre, played a new character named Mose in a new play, A Glance at New York in 1848. The new character was so immediately and phenomenally popular that Chanfrau was to play it in one of seven different vehicles at two different theatres in New York no less than 385 times between 15 February 1848 and 6 July 1850.

The Turbulent First Year of the Royal Circus (1782–1783)

In the late eighteenth century, and with increasing momentum in the early nineteenth, the minor theatres in London steadily challenged the monopoly of the two patent houses—with great ingenuity in circumventing several Licensing Acts; with highly imaginative and lively (albeit generally unsophisticated) bills; and with eager support from the workers, flocking to the capital as part of the industrial age, for whom the minor theatres provided escape. By the time Planché's “Mother Drama” admitted confusion about her sons “Legitimate Drama” and “Illegitimate Drama” on the stage of the Olympic Theatre on 16 April 1838, the minor theatres had prevailed.

James Robinson Planché and the English Burletta Tradition

In 1879, many years after his initial success in the burletta, James Robinson Planché recalled how the renewed popularity of Kane O'Hara's Midas at the Haymarket in 1825, with the piquant Madame Vestris featured as Apollo, had moved him to write a similar play. He recalled, too, that, despite the fact that his works in burlesque and melodrama had been well received at the patent theatres, he could not persuade any manager, of either a major or minor house, “to accept my classical bantling.” The young playwright put away his manuscript and busied himself with a variety of successful works, opera and melodrama and farce. It was only on meeting Madame Vestris one day late in 1830 and learning that this outstanding actress, now without a permanent means of support, had conceived the idea of opening her own theatre on the site of the little Pavilion in Wych Street which Elliston had formerly occupied, that Planché resurrected his early manuscript and offered it to her for the initial presentation at the new Royal Olympic Theatre. She accepted, and Olympic Revels was performed on 3 January 1831. It was a most successful play in what was to become a most successful playhouse.

Notes on Theatre in West Germany

Any report on Olympic Theatre would be incomplete without mention of the tremendous amount of theatre activity generated throughout West Germany by the occasion of the Games. For the most part, this activity—some of it officially connected with the athletic events through a huge program called “Olympic Summer”—involved conventional theatre fare, ranging from productions of Brecht's Mother Courage, Büchner's Danton's Death, Wedekind's The Love Potion, Hochhuth's The Midwife, to Walcott's The Dream on Monkey Mountain (performed by the Negro Ensemble Company), the Chinese shadow play San mei hua pan ying, Genet's The Balcony, and Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Although every major German city had a full Summer production schedule, most of the abovementioned plays were staged in or near Munich, Berlin, Augsburg, and Kiel.The purpose of this piece, however, is not to survey all the theatre activity that took place in West Germany this past Summer, but to report in brief note form on some of the more interesting information I gathered on productions, playwrights and directors during the “Olympic Summer.”

Editorial: On Olympic Theatre

Editorial: On Olympic Theatre

An Examination of the Plays Produced by Madame Vestris during her Management of the Olympic Theatre in London from January 3, 1831 to May 31, 1839.

One of the highpoints of theatrical management in London during the early part of the 19th century was achieved by Madame Vestris in the nine seasons she operated the Olympic Theatre from January 3, 1831 to May 31, 1839. Important contributions in management, acting and scenic decor were made and have been commented upon. The free list was suspended; the practice of “puffing” (praising a work in advance of actual performance) was abandoned; the final curtain was rung down each night at 11 P.M. instead of the usual hour of midnight; actors' benefit performances were abolished; failures were withdrawn as quickly as possible from further performances; and by allowing no one behind the scenes to visit with actors and actresses the general atmosphere backstage was improved.

Early Nineteenth Century Stage Settings in the British Theatre

There has been a good deal of speculation by theatre scholars concerning when realistic interior stage settings, or to be more specific, the box-set was first used on the English stage. Waitzkin contends that the box-set made its first appearance in England at the Olympic Theatre in a production of The Conquering Game by W. B. Bernard given on November 3, 1832. Armstrong agrees with Waitzkin's contention except he dates the performance as given on November 28, 1832. Rowell believes that the etched frontispiece to The Conquering Game“…is insufficient to confirm that this ‘more perfect enclosure’ involved flats entirely surrounding the scene and a ceiling cloth as well.” Hunter agrees with Rowell and can find “No positive indication” in the etching for the claim that this was the first box-set used on the English stage (l).