Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.
The Boy Friend is a musical by Sandy Wilson. Its original 1954 London production ran for 2,078 performances, briefly making it the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history until they were all surpassed by Salad Days. The Boy Friend marked Julie Andrews' American stage debut.
The Rose was an Elizabethan theatre. It was the fourth of the public theatres to be built, after The Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577), and the theatre at Newington Butts – and the first of several playhouses to be situated in Bankside, Southwark, in a liberty outside the jurisdiction of the City of London's civic authorities. Its remains were excavated by archaeologists in 1989 and are listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument.
Michael Henry Flanders was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann.
The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella is a 1976 British musical retelling the classic fairy tale of Cinderella. The film was chosen as the Royal Command Performance motion picture selection for 1976.
James Burbage was an English actor, theatre impresario, joiner, and theatre builder in the English Renaissance theatre. He built The Theatre, the first permanent dedicated theatre built in England since Roman times.
The Curtain Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Hewett Street, Shoreditch, just outside the City of London. It opened in 1577, and continued staging plays until 1624.
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a "playing company", for which William Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronized by James I.
The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals and stories adapted from films, novels, shōjo manga, and Japanese folktales. The Takarazuka Revue Company is a division of the Hankyu Railway company; all members of the troupe are employed by Hankyu.
A safety curtain is a passive fire protection feature used in large proscenium theatres. It is usually a heavy fabric curtain located immediately behind the proscenium arch. Asbestos-based materials were originally used to manufacture the curtain, before the dangers of asbestos were widely known. The safety curtain is sometimes referred to as an iron curtain in British theatres, regardless of the actual construction material.
The Lord Chamberlain's Office is a department within the British Royal Household. It is concerned with matters such as protocol, state visits, investitures, garden parties, royal weddings and funerals. For example, in April 2005 it organised the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles. It is also responsible for authorising use of the Royal Arms.
Grand Théâtre de Genève is an opera house in Geneva, Switzerland.
Fallen Angels is a comedy by the English playwright Noël Coward. It opened at the Globe Theatre, London on 21 April 1925 and ran until 29 August. The central theme of two wives admitting to premarital sex and contemplating adultery met hostility from the office of the official theatre censor, the Lord Chamberlain, and the necessary licence was granted only after the personal intervention of the Chamberlain.
At the Drop of a Hat is a musical revue by Flanders and Swann, described by them as "an after-dinner farrago". In the show, they both sang on a nearly bare stage, accompanied by Swann on the piano. The songs were linked by contemporary social commentary, mostly by Flanders. After a long London run the show played in the US, Switzerland, and on tour in Britain.
Thomas Pope, also credited as Thomas Poope in the First Folio, was an Elizabethan actor, a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men and a colleague of William Shakespeare. Pope was a "comedian and acrobat."
John Underwood was an early 17th-century actor, a member of the King's Men, the theatrics company of William Shakespeare.
Fresh Airs was a revue produced by Laurier Lister that opened in Brighton in 1955. It was the last in his series of "Airs" revues before Flanders & Swann started performing for themselves in At the Drop of a Hat.
Alice Henriette Lapize, better known by her stage name, Alice Delysia and sometimes Elise Delisia, was a French actress and singer who made her career in English musical theatre. After performing in the chorus at the Moulin Rouge and other theatres in Paris from the age of 14, she became a chorus girl in Edwardian musical comedies, briefly on Broadway in 1905, then in London for several years and back in Paris in 1912.
On 5 September 1887, a fire broke out in the backstage area of the Theatre Royal in Exeter, England, during the production of The Romany Rye. The fire caused panic throughout the theatre, with 186 people dying from a combination of the direct effects of smoke and flame, crushing and trampling, and trauma injuries from falling or jumping from the roof and balconies.
Splinters was a popular theatrical revue that ran in several versions in Britain between the First World War and the 1930s. It featured female impersonators, and men cross-dressing as women, and was originally developed in the First Army by a concert party, Les Rouges et Noirs. A film version was made in 1929, with sequels.
