This is the first book to chronicle fully the history of London's Old Vic Theatre. After Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, the Old Vic is London's oldest theatre, with a continuous history since 1818. Drawing on important archives, both here (notably the Royal Victoria Hall's) and in the United States, George Rowell sheds new light on the management, audience, productions, and players. In particular he offers fresh information on its early years, when such famous figures as Edmund Kean and William Charles Macready appeared there, and Paganini gave his farewell concert. Throughout its history the Old Vic has served a number of purposes and provided many brands of entertainment, including spectacle, pantomime, 'blood-and-thunder melodrama', and variety. Subsequently it was used as a 'temperance hall' and working-men's college. The Theatre was the first permanent home of opera in English as well as British ballet, and, above all, the birthplace of the world
This is an account of the origins, development and current state of the repertory theatre movement in Britain. The movement had its roots in ideas, experiments and traditions stretching back into the nineteenth century, and first found its voice in 1907 with Miss Horniman's company in Manchester. Since then it has played a vital - often a dominant - role in British twentieth-century theatre. As a method of theatre organisation, repertory refers to those theatres based primarily in the regions, housing a resident acting company and seeking to maintain each season a programme of plays catering for the tastes of the whole community. But the theory has never been dogmatic and the movement has evolved from a gamut of complex factors, not least the visions of particular personalities. Major landmarks in the history include the effects of the two World Wars, the advent of substantial state funding for the Arts, the growth of cinema and television and the renewal of theatre's link with the com
This edition includes four plays and one libretto, covering more than twenty years of the dramatist's career: The Palace of Truth (1870), Sweethearts (1874), Princess Toto (1876), Engaged (1877) and R
Originally published between 1982 and 1987, this series brings together the works of a wide and varied sampling of British and American dramatists from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centur
