Black-Eyed Susan

Last updated

Black-Eyed Susan on the bill of the Theatre Royal, Jersey, in December 1829 Theatre Royal Jersey 19 December 1829.jpg
Black-Eyed Susan on the bill of the Theatre Royal, Jersey, in December 1829

Black-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs is a comic play in three acts by Douglas Jerrold. The story concerns a heroic sailor, William, who has been away from England for three years fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Meanwhile, his wife, Susan, has fallen on hard times and is being harassed by her crooked landlord uncle. A smuggler named Hatchet offers to pay her debts because he wants her for himself; he tries to persuade her that William is dead. Soon after William returns to solve this problem, his drunken, dastardly captain tries to seduce Susan. William, not recognising his captain from behind, strikes him with his cutlass. He is court-martialled for attacking a senior officer and sentenced to be hanged. But it turns out that he had been discharged from the navy before he struck his captain, so all ends well. Much of the humour in the piece centers on the sailor's nautical dialect, combined with his noble character. The play is a nautical melodrama (with all its stock characters) that praises the patriotic British tar (sailor) while critiquing authoritarianism in the British Navy. Aspects of the story were later parodied in H.M.S. Pinafore (1878). [1]

Contents

The play was Jerrold's first big success, premiering on 8 June 1829 at the Surrey Theatre [2] and running for a new record of over 150 performances. [3] Britain at the time was recovering from the fallout of the Napoleonic Wars and was in the midst of a class war involving the Corn laws, and a reform movement, which resulted in the Reform Act of 1832 aimed at reducing corruption. Black-Eyed Susan consisted of various extreme stereotypes representing the forces of good, evil, the innocent and the corrupt, the poor and the rich, woven into a serious plot with comic sub-plots. Its topical subject contributed to the play's enormous success. T. P. Cooke starred as William, the nautical hero, becoming a star, and the producer, Robert William Elliston, became rich. The piece played simultaneously at Covent Garden Theatre for part of the original run, and soon after it closed at the Surrey, it was revived at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for a total run of over 300 nights, which was extraordinarily successful for the time. [4] After this, it was frequently revived. [5]

The play was revived at the Warehouse Theatre in Croydon in 1986, and the same production played at the Playhouse Oxford in 1987. It was directed by Ted Craig and designed by Michael Pavelka. The cast included Simon Slater, Rita Wolf and Burt Caesar. [6] The piece was given a 2007 revival at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds. The play was made into a 1914 film directed by Maurice Elvey. [7] Among the numerous Victorian burlesques and later parody versions of the play was an 1884 version by F. C. Burnand called Black Eyed See-Usan, first produced at the Alhambra Theatre. [8]

Characters

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Selkirk</span> 18th-century Scottish sailor and castaway

Alexander Selkirk was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean. He survived that ordeal, but died from tropical illness years later while serving as a lieutenant aboard HMS Weymouth off West Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilbert and Sullivan</span> Victorian-era theatrical partnership

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known.

<i>H.M.S. Pinafore</i> 1878 comic opera by Gilbert & Sullivan

H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London on 25 May 1878, and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1829.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas William Jerrold</span> English dramatist and writer (1803-1857)

Douglas William Jerrold was an English dramatist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F. C. Burnand</span> British comic writer and dramatist (1836–1917)

Sir Francis Cowley Burnand, usually known as F. C. Burnand, was an English comic writer and prolific playwright, best known today as the librettist of Arthur Sullivan's opera Cox and Box.

Pineapple Poll is a Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic ballet, created by choreographer John Cranko with arranger Sir Charles Mackerras. Pineapple Poll is based on "The Bumboat Woman's Story", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, written in 1870. The Gilbert and Sullivan opera H.M.S. Pinafore was also based, in part, on this story. For the ballet, Cranko expanded the story of the Bab Ballad and added a happy ending. All the music is arranged from Sullivan's music.

Events from the year 1829 in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds</span> Regency theatre in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England

The Theatre Royal, formerly the New Theatre, is a restored Regency theatre in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England. The building is one of eight Grade I listed theatres in the United Kingdom, and is the only working theatre operated under the auspices of the National Trust. It is considered to be one of the most perfect examples of Regency theatres in Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Lytton</span> British actor and singer (1865–1936)

Sir Henry Lytton was an English actor and singer who was the leading exponent of the starring comic patter-baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1909 to 1934. He also starred in musical comedies. His career with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company spanned 50 years, and he is the only performer ever knighted for achievements in Gilbert and Sullivan roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surrey Theatre</span> Former theatre in London

The Surrey Theatre, London began life in 1782 as the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy, one of the many circuses that provided entertainment of both horsemanship and drama (hippodrama). It stood in Blackfriars Road, near the junction with Westminster Bridge Road, just south of the River Thames in what is now the London Borough of Southwark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harriett Everard</span> English singer and actress

Harriett Everard was an English singer and actress best known for originating the role of Little Buttercup in the Gilbert and Sullivan hit H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878. The character regretfully reveals a key secret that sets up the ending of the opera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Cooke (Royal Navy officer)</span> Royal Navy Captain (1762–1805)

John Cooke was an experienced and highly regarded officer of the Royal Navy during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the first years of the Napoleonic Wars. Cooke is best known for his death in hand-to-hand combat with French forces during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. During the action, his ship HMS Bellerophon was badly damaged and boarded by sailors and marines from the French ship of the line Aigle. Cooke was killed in the ensuing melee, but his crew successfully drove off their opponents and ultimately forced the surrender of Aigle.

Hollywood Pinafore, or The Lad Who Loved a Salary is a musical comedy in two acts by George S. Kaufman, with music by Arthur Sullivan, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. The adaptation transplants the maritime satire of the original Pinafore to a satire of the glamorous world of 1940s Hollywood film making, but Sullivan's score is retained with minor adaptations.

For nearly 150 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world. Lines and quotations from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", "let the punishment fit the crime", and "A policeman's lot is not a happy one".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Fowler</span> English actress, singer and theatre manager

Susannah Fowler, known by her stage name Emily Fowler, was an English actress, singer and theatre manager. Beginning in musical burlesques, she later played in contemporary drama and English classics. Although she was well-known on the London stage from 1869 to 1881, she is probably best remembered today for creating roles in three of W. S. Gilbert's early works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Cooke (actor)</span> English actor

Thomas Potter Cooke was an English actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William John Hammond</span> British actor of the 19th-century

William John Hammond was a British actor-manager and singer of comic songs of the early 19th-century. He played Sam Weller in Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians in 1837.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long runs on the London stage since 1700</span>

Runs of several thousand performances were familiar in West End theatres in the 21st century. The closure of London theatres in the Covid-19 pandemic halted the continuous runs of eight shows that had been running for more than 4,000 performances. Such long runs were a phenomenon not seen before the late 20th century: in earlier years, much shorter runs were the norm, even for shows considered great successes.

References

  1. ↑ Walbrook, H. M. (1922). "Chapter V: The Adventures of H.M.S. Pinafore". Gilbert & Sullivan Opera, A History and a Comment. London: F. V. White & Co. Ltd.
  2. ↑ London Evening Standard , 9 June 1829, p. 1
  3. ↑ Parker, John, ed. (1925). Who's Who in the Theatre (fifth ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC   10013159. pp. 1196–1197
  4. ↑ "Douglas Jerrold, T. P. Cooke, and Black-Eyed Susan", The New York Times, 29 November 1885, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Melville, Lewis and Lewis Saul Benjamin. Victorian Novelists, p. 59, London, A. Constable and Company, limited, 1906.
  6. ↑ Theatre programme, Warehouse Theatre, Croydon, December 1986.
  7. ↑ Black-Eyed Susan 1914 film.
  8. ↑ "Dramatic Gossip", The Athenaeum: A Journal, 16 August 1884, p. 220.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.