Press Clippings for the week ending
Saturday, 23 November 2002
A random selection of cuttings
from newspapers and magazines
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* * * * * * * * The Canterbury music hall, London, December 1869 |
The Canterbury music hall bill, December 1869
(unidentified newspaper cutting, dated December 1869)
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left, Miss Amalia, ‘Juvenile Burlesque Actress & Dancer of the Royal Surrey Theatre, St Jamess Hall &c’
right, Nelly Power (1854-1887), English dancer and music hall serio-comic
(photos: left, C.J. Tear, London, circa 1870;
right, The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co Ltd, London, circa 1870)
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* * * * * * * * The death of Nelly Power, London, 1887
‘Theatrical organs announce the death [on 20 January 1887] of Miss Nellie Power – a vivacious and gifted songstress, who, though in recent years exclusively the delight of the music hall, figured at one time on the boards of the theatre stage. When, during the earlier years of their management, Messrs David James and [Thomas] Thorne made burlesques part of their attractions at the Vaudeville Theatre in London, Miss Nellie Power was one of the company, and proved a very sprightly interpretress of the lively puns and songs which Mr. F.C. Burnand, the present editor of Punch, Mr. [Robert] Reece, the late H J Byron, and others, wrote for her. She had a good voice; her style of singing was superior to the ordinary requisites of burlesque, and her energy and spirits were unflagging. Later on, however, she forsook the theatre for the music hall, and contented herself with the laurels to be won by the verve with which she sang such ditties as "Lah-di-dah" [i.e. ‘The City Toff; or, Crutch and Toothpick (La-Di-Da!)’, 1879] and "Tiddy-fol-lol" [1872]. Miss Power, though an "old stager," was but thirty-three years of age at the time of her death. This is, however, explained by the fact that she commenced her career almost as a child.’
‘Theatrical Chit-Chat.
‘On Thursday morning [20 January 1887] I received a note from Nelly power, telling me that she had just lately been compelled to forego her engagements, and further hoping that the recent trying weather had not left me much damaged. No sooner had I read this than a telegram was handed me. This was from her mother, and ran thus:- "My beloved daughter died this morning suddenly at 1 o’clock." Could this be possible? Was there no mistake? No! there was no getting away from the fact that the poor girl who had written to me but an hour or two before had passed out of a world which had, on the whole, behaved very kindly to her. Nelly Power, I fancy, was born in 1853. Most people fancied that her age was considerably more than it was, and because she had been before the public for so long a time. When a singer or actress has been singing or acting for twenty years and more, it is difficult to imagine she can be only thirty-four years old; but, as in the mournful instance which I have to record, it is often true. The late Nelly Power had been on the stage ever since she was eight years of age, and for a large portion of that period she was a prominent figure at theatre and music-hall. When Messrs. James and Thorne played burlesque at the Vaudeville, it was Nelly Power who, more than any other performer, made this staple attractive there; while, since that period, her name always brought support to any establishment at which she performed. Endowed with a charming voice and having music in her soul, she gave marvellous importance to her songs, which she rendered in a searching style that found out everybody’s heart. Nelly Power, too, was a woman of the kindest impulses, and many and many a sister and brother professional she befriended. It seems very hard that she should be taken away so young; at the same time, it is consoling to know that her span of life was one in which success played a leading part. R.I.P.’ * * * * * * * *
Stars and Garters, Folly, London, 21 September 1878
‘A melancholy gloom fell over the audience on Saturday evening, as the curtain fell upon the last scene of the silliest burlesque ever produced in a London theatre. Whilst the actors and actresses were uproariously laughing in song, agreeably with orders received those of the public who were not too genteel or too jaded to express an opinion, jeered and hissed. There appears to be a limit to the endurance of even a metropolitan public in a place of so-called amusement, and certainly that limit was passes when Messrs. [H.B.] Farnie and [Robert] Reece presented Stars and Garters as a specimen of wit and humour. Were it not for the bright, cheerful presence of Miss Lydia Thompson in these plays they would be, beyond expression, intolerable. Even with that charming lady the labour of assisting at their performance becomes "flat, stale, and unprofitable"; whilst the fatal desire to produce effects by buffoonery and posturing even influences her to the extent of serious injury in the public esteem as an able artiste. How false and how utterly repugnant to general taste this idiotic style of writing has become, was, we are glad to state, unmistakably expressed the other evening, and we hope every future effort of a like kind will meet a similar fate. It is positively insulting to people of ordinary intelligence to ask them to follow the course of such silly rubbish as the authors in question dignify with the name of a burlesque, and it is absolutely wonderful how the mind of any writer could work out whole pages in which there is neither playfulness, wit, common sense or consistency; whilst as for plot, incident, or anything but posturing and tumbling, there is none. Everything has its day, and this species of pretension to fun must be put down (as it was the other evening), by the strong voice of public opinion. What may be sport and pastime to such authors, is destruction to even commonplace art, and only brings the theatre into ridicule and contempt. We will not recount the supposed story of the piece, further than to state that King Jingo (Mr. Lionel Brough) is fated to die at whatever time Lazuli (Miss Lydia Thompson) gives up the ghost; and that the predictor of this fate, Zadkiel (Mr. [Harry] Paulton), is foredoomed by the King to die a few minutes after. Upon this funereal subject the whole story depends, and all that is done by anyone concerned in such action as there is either springs from it or is led up to it. How lamely it all progresses, and how very poorly the players were able to keep up the illusion of being funny, the fate of the piece on its first production sufficiently attested. The introduced music was taken from the concert halls in nearly every case; and, by a strange fatality, every member of the company, except Miss [Annie] Poole, sang inefficiently or out of tune. The puns were dreadfully meaningless, and seemed to be dragged in for the purpose of advertising certain tradesmen. The fun of one character (played by Miss Bishop) was supposed to lie in its resemblance to the Earl of Beaconsfield, and the standard joke of the piece was the word "Cyprus." Miss Rose Cullen and Miss Edith Blande played with parts with energy. So, too, did Messrs. Brough, Paulton, and [Alfred] Bishop, and the absurd things this trio of gentlemen essayed in order to provoke laughter was worthy of Bartlemy [i.e. Bartholomew] Fair in its palmist days. They dismally failed in their attempts to elicit smiles, and finally gazed in utter blankness at the sombre countenances which stared and wondered at their most energetic sallies.’ |
left, Annie Poole
right, Rose Cullen
(‘Electro-Photographs’ by The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Co Ltd, London, circa 1878)
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Tantalus; or, Many a Slip ’Twixt Cup and Lip,
‘At the Folly Theatre Stars and Garters has, after an inglorious career, been withdrawn, and Tantalus fills its place. The new piece is an improvement upon the old, and proves to be practically much the same as A Night of Terror [i.e. Night of Terror; A Musical Madness in Three Fyttes by the same authors, Folly, 22 December 1877], which, like Tantalus, is taken from La Boite à Bibi. The plot is a wild absurdity, and the abilities of Mr. Lionel Brough and Miss Lydia Thompson are wasted upon illustrating its situations; but Mr. W.J. Hill finds in the character of a sentimental locksmith a part in which he can display a good deal of his rich, broad humour. As compared with Stars and Garters, Tantalus is a work of art, full of fun, and thoroughly well worth seeing; and in its intrinsic merits it may worthily fill the gap until some suitable new burlesque is unearthed. After Mr. Hill the performer who is seen to most advantage is Miss Annie Poole.’ * * * * * * * * Frederick Kerr lectures on the modern theatre, London, 1895
‘The second of the series of lectures by representative actors, arranged by the Playgoers’ Club, was delivered at St. James’s Hall on Sunday evening [1 December 1895] by Mr Frederick Kerr, who is now playing in that amusing comedy, The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown [Vaudeville, 26 June 1895; transferred to Terry’s, 7 October 1895]. Mr Kerr began his remarks with a vigorous onslaught on what he called the "Dick, Tom, and Harry" critics of the Press, who represented a bad form of American journalism that had sprung into existence of late years. But there wee, he admitted, critics of another stamp – good-natured ones, too, such as the provincial critic, who having exhausted all his vocabulary of praise upon the leading actors in a performance of Hamlet, suddenly remembered that he had left out the Ghost, and concluded his article by observing that "Mr Blank made a pleasing and gentlemanly Ghost." Actors, he continued, used to be looked upon as a narrow, Bohemian set, dwelling in a small circle of which the Strand might have been taken as the diameter. Times were changed. As to the theatre, were they not in danger of making it a meeting ground of small admiration societies rather than a place of amusement for the public? Early students of the drama, they were called, who delighted in the study of plays dealing with disordered minds and diseased bodies. The "early student of the drama" was usually a deadhead. He believed that unless the brighter side of human nature asserted itself in modern plays half the theatres in London would soon be closed. Why were the music halls so successful? Because people wanted to be amused, and not to sit down to the serious study of a pessimistic play. Let them get rid of "realism" and take on again such plays as The Ticket-of-Leave Man [1863], The Two Roses [1870], and Diplomacy [1878]. He had no hesitation in denouncing Isben as the greatest enemy of the actor. Away, then, he said, with the pessimistic drama. As to acting, he maintained there was no such thing as an old school and a modern school, pointing out that the same gifts and the same temperament were called forth by every period of acting. The good actor of to-day, therefore, would have been the good actor of yesterday. There had always been two kinds of bad actors, and in speaking of actors it was best to leave them out. The one spoke modern slang as if it were blank verse, and the other persisted in being inaudible because he thought it was fashionable. He cited Mrs Keeley and Mrs John Wood as "two links in the chain," declining to regard them as representatives of two schools of acting. Could acting have been less stagey than Mrs Keeley’s delivery of her speech at the Lyceum the other day? Turning to Lionel Brough (the chairman of the evening), the lecturer referred to him as a veteran who had probably played the gravedigger with T.C. King, whereas now he was playing in one of the most up-to-date plays [i.e. The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown at Terry’s] in quite the modern style. With actors, as with everything else, times had changed. In the subsequent discussion the lecturer’s denunciation of the pessimistic drama was not allowed to pass unchallenged. The chairman said in his early days there was no "realism" on the stage, and very little of the natural. For an actor then to have leaned against a mantelpiece in a natural manner was a crime that would have met with condign punishment at the hands of the stage-manager. He remember once playing in the provinces in a play in which he had to "carve and eat" a papier-mache fowl. Addressing the stage-manager, he said, "Can’t you put a little ham round it to make it look more real?" The astonished official demurred, with the remark, "The man who can’t eat a property fowl is no actor".’
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© John Culme, 2002