Recently with the aim of improving my knowledge of Theatre LibraryGirl went into the reserve section of our local Library and looked for titles not normally found on the shelves. LibraryGirl found this book among her first haul of borrowings and brought it back. I should explain that apart from the names Ellen Terry and Henry Irving I know nothing about Victorian Theatre, this is for many reasons chief amongst them being that:
A) With the move from Romanticism in the 1800s to the Realistic form of theatre spearheaded by Stanislavski and Chekov and eventual influence of the myriad of art movements in the 20th Century the Victorian Theatre can be forgotten and dismissed.
B) When I was studying at University I showed an interest in looking at Victorian Melodrama but was looked at as if I had a second head. I feel that in our industry as it is today there is an attitude towards Victorian Theatre that it is more archaic and less artistically viable than Greek Theatre.
I saw the cover of this book then read the first page and found myself immersed almost instantaneously. I have an interest in Music Hall, Vaudeville and now in Penny Gaffs thanks to this book. Paul Sheridan the author of this work says that the impetus for the book was an old pamphlet he found in a Soho bookshop and that like me once he started reading about the Penny Theatres he couldn't stop. The book is essentially a precis of the pamphlet Sheridan found in Soho with additional material sourced from various collections and just a few insights from Sheridan. What I found interesting in the book was the various accounts of these places made by members of the Victorian Establishment who looked down on these venues and their content. I also found it shocking to read that the entertainments within these venues were playing to children... yes children. The most violent stories from the Penny Dreadfuls would make their way to the Penny Gaff stage, the real life murders committed by Jack the Ripper were immensely popular and made more spectacularly violent, the most famous Shakespeare plays were cut down to 20 minutes and just featured the bloodiest and sensational parts. It shocked me because of the fact that these children would steal, beg and sell their bodies to get into these theatres and that these venues were the only thing keeping these children happy through their harsh and generally short lives. I also couldn't help drawing comparisons to my own youth when many of my friends would watch highly violent films whilst underage and how there is this big idea in our society about children being exposed to violence so young. However here it was, the very same problem from my youth was widespread in many of the major cities of the UK in the Victorian age but the difference is that back then these children's lives were violent. The life of a Victorian child was fraught with threat of death, disease and poverty so maybe the ideas of the Victorian Establishment are a bit extreme, after all by seeing these 'horrors' on the stage they would have been confronted to a certain extent by the reality of these children's lives. To a child these acts on stage were probably a baser form of satire a chance to laugh at the harshness of life and forget their problems. This book also covers the lifestyle of the players and proprietors of these theatres and makes cases for how some players were from legitimate theatres who had fallen on hard times or young people on their way up the ladder, although this was incredibly rare, a great example of someone who ended their career in the Penny Theatre's was Tom Ellar who had been the great Harlequin at Covent Garden.
The book ends with the story of Robert Loraine, the actor who brought George Bernard Shaw's play 'Man and Superman' to Broadway, of how he began his acting career in a Gaff in Liverpool and how he bridged that world to the legitimate theatre.
I loved this book, it was really interesting and it is available on amazon.co.uk if you want to read it. I highly reccomend this title to anyone interested in the Victorian theatre.
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