The Interlude at the Playhouse

Last updated

The Interlude at the Playhouse
George Bernard Shaw 1934-12-06.jpg
Written by George Bernard Shaw
Date premiered28 January 1907
Place premiered Playhouse Theatre
Original languageEnglish
SubjectAn actor's wife pleads with the audience to be kind to her husband
Genre curtain raiser
SettingThe Playhouse Theatre

The Interlude at the Playhouse (1907) is a short comic sketch written by George Bernard Shaw to be delivered by Cyril Maude and his wife Winifred Emery as a curtain raiser at the opening of The Playhouse, a newly renovated theatre managed by Maude. The sketch was performed on Monday, 28 January 1907. [1]

Contents

Characters

Plot

Maude (as "Edwin Goldsmith") is an actor-manager who has to give a speech to the audience on the opening of a new theatre. He is so nervous that his wife has to appeal to the audience behind his back to be kind to him when he appears. Other members of the theatre company are getting anxious about the delay. Goldsmith has prepared an interminable speech outlining the history of the location going back to the Doomsday book. His wife is anxious that they should start the play "Pickles", but Edwin says he is bored with it and wants to play Hamlet. Eventually he is persuaded to finish his speech. He tells the audience, "I have dealt with our little play-house in its historical aspect. I have dealt with it in its political aspect, in its financial aspect, in its artistic aspect, in its social aspect, in its County Council aspect, in its biological and psychological aspects." He leaves, irritated, when the band start to play, undercutting his serious speech. His wife reminds the audience that drama is not mere entertainment, but has a higher purpose, so though they aim to please, "we will not please you except on terms honourable to ourselves and to you."

Background

Shaw's West End début had been at the Royal Avenue Theatre with Arms and the Man in 1894. It was successful enough to allow him to discontinue music criticism to focus full-time on play writing. The Royal Avenue Theatre was closed and rebuilt between 1905 and 1907, to be reopened as "The Playhouse". It opened with showings of new plays. The evening of the opening included a new one-act play by Austin Strong called The Drums of Oudh and an already-successful play called Toddles, a translation of a work by Tristan Bernard and Andre Godferneaux. Shaw's sketch was performed as a curtain raiser for the main piece Toddles (pastiched as "Pickles"). [2]

Publication

The text of the sketch was published in The Daily Mail on 29 January 1907. It was later republished by Cyril Maude in his memoir Lest I Forget (1928) in his chapter on the opening of the theatre. [3] It was included among Shaw's minor works in a 1951 edition after his death. [4]

Reviews

The sketch was apparently the hit of the night's entertainments, described by the Times as "the clou of the evening". [5] The programme did not advertise it as a dramatic piece, but stated "Mr. Cyril Maude, 'supported' by Miss Wilfred Emery, will 'address the audience'". [6]

Archibald Henderson, Shaw's friend and biographer, calls it a "dainty little interlude", and says that "The genuine delicacy and lightness of touch with which the situation is handled, and the absence of Shavian intrusiveness, unite in making of the interlude a little gem, quite perfect of its kind." [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Beerbohm Tree</span> English actor and theatre manager (1852–1917)

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustin Daly</span> 19th-century American playwright and theatre impresario

John Augustin Daly was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America. He exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and earned him the title "the autocrat of the stage." He formed a permanent company in New York and opened Daly's Theatre in New York in 1879, and a second one in London in 1893.

<i>The Second Mrs Tanqueray</i> 1893 stage play by Arthur Wing Pinero

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is a problem play by Arthur Wing Pinero. It utilises the "Woman with a past" plot, popular in nineteenth century melodrama. The play was first produced in 1893 by the actor-manager George Alexander and despite causing some shock to his audiences by its scandalous subject it was a box-office success, and was revived in London and New York in many productions during the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre Royal Haymarket</span> West-End theatre in London, England

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre on Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foote acquired the lease in 1747, and in 1766 he gained a royal patent to play legitimate drama in the summer months. The original building was a little further north in the same street. It has been at its current location since 1821, when it was redesigned by John Nash. It is a Grade I listed building, with a seating capacity of 888. The freehold of the theatre is owned by the Crown Estate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyril Maude</span> British actor (1862–1951)

Cyril Francis Maude was an English actor-manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alma Murray</span>

Alma Murray (1854–1945) was an English actress.

Norman Frederick Simpson was an English playwright closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. To his friends he was known as Wally Simpson, in comic reference to the abdication crisis of 1936.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Playhouse Theatre</span> Theatre in London

The Playhouse Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, located in Northumberland Avenue, near Trafalgar Square, central London. The Theatre was built by F. H. Fowler and Hill with a seating capacity of 1,200. It was rebuilt in 1907 and still retains its original substage machinery. As of November 2021, the theatre has been refurbished and renamed as the Kit Kat Club and is home to a revival of the musical Cabaret with a seating capacity of 550.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Anderson Emery</span>

Samuel "Sam" Anderson Emery (1814–1881) was an English stage actor, the father of the actress Winifred Emery and grandfather of the actress Margery Maude and the judge John Cyril Maude.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hollis Street Theatre</span>

The Hollis Street Theatre (1885–1935) was a theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, that presented dramatic plays, opera, musical concerts, and other entertainments.

<i>Society</i> (play) 1865 comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson

Society was an 1865 comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson regarded as a milestone in Victorian drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and stage direction inspired George Bernard Shaw and W. S. Gilbert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. B. Fagan</span>

James Bernard Fagan was an Irish-born actor, theatre manager, producer and playwright active in England. After turning from the law to the stage, Fagan began his acting career, including four years from 1895 to 1899 with Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at Her Majesty's Theatre. He then began to write plays, returning eventually to acting during World War I. In 1920, he took over London's Court Theatre as a Shakespearean playhouse and soon began to produce plays at other West End theatres. His adaptation of Treasure Island in 1922 was a hit and became an annual Christmas event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gertrude Kingston</span>

Gertrude Kingston was an actress, an English actor-manager and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winifred Emery</span> English actress and actor-manager (1861–1924)

Winifred Emery was an English actress and actor-manager of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was the wife of the actor Cyril Maude.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provincetown Playhouse</span>

The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and West 4th Streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the former stable and wine-bottling plant into a theater in 1918.

<i>Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores</i>

Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores is a 1913 one-act play by Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. It was written between two of his other 1913 plays, Pygmalion and The Music Cure. It tells the story of a prim British visitor to the court of the sexually uninhibited Catherine the Great of Russia.

<i>Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction</i> Play by George Bernard Shaw

Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction is a short play by Bernard Shaw, subtitled The Fatal Gazogene: a Brief Tragedy for Barns and Booths. It is a comic mock-melodrama, written to raise funds for charity. It has been revived occasionally, in tandem with other short works by Shaw or by other playwrights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McVicker's Theater</span>

McVicker's Theater (1857–1984) was a playhouse in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Built for actor James Hubert McVicker, the theater was the leading stage for comedic plays in Chicago's early years. It often hosted performances by Edwin Booth, who married McVicker's daughter and was once targeted there in an attempted murder. Adler & Sullivan designed a remodel in 1883. Although destroyed in two fires, including the Great Chicago Fire, McVicker's remained an operating theater until 1984. It was demolished the next year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beatrice Ferrar</span> British actress

Beatrice Ferrar was a British actress who made a speciality of playing in 18th-century dramas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Rous</span> Irish actress (1863–1934)

Helen Rous was a versatile Irish actor who played many times on the London stage. Her parts included supporting roles in works by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

References

  1. 1 2 Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1956, p.567.
  2. Burton, Richard, Bernard Shaw, the Man and the Mask, H. Holt, 1916, p.140.
  3. Maude, Cyril, "The Opening of the Playhouse", Lest I Forget, New York, 1928, pp. 168-184.
  4. The Shaw Review, Volume 1, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1951, p.99.
  5. Myron Matlaw, The Shaw Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, Penn State University Press, May, 1960, pp. 9-17.
  6. Wearing, J. P., The London Stage 1900-1909: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and PersonnelScarecrow Press, 2013, p.328.