Gaiety Nights

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-246
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Musical Comedy ◽  
Music Hall

This chapter identifies the emergence of ‘light entertainment’ in the West End. Linked to music hall, this was a form of performance that was aspirational and less vulgar. It led to the construction of large variety houses such as the London Coliseum. The chapter moves from musical comedy to variety, vaudeville, and the exotic ballets at the Alhambra. These were entertainments that offered sophistication but rarely pretended to be high culture. The chapter examines theatres such as the Alhambra and the Empire variety houses who were attacked because of the sexual nature of their ballets as well as their toleration of prostitutes. The figure who dominates the chapter is the impresario George Edwardes who turned the Gaiety Girl into an icon of the age. Light entertainment was conservative but had its utopian dimensions.

scholarly journals Jazz and Music-Hall Transgressions in Theatre Workshop's Production of A Taste of Honey

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336
Author(s):  
Alec Patton
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Music Hall ◽  
The Right ◽  
Original Production ◽  
The University

Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in the Theatre Workshop production of 1959 opened to the sound of a fast twelve-bar blues played on trumpet, saxophone, and guitar by musicians sitting in a box to the right of the stage. Though rarely mentioned by historians, the ‘Apex Jazz Trio’, as they were called, were a lively and unpredictable element in the production. Between the actors' open acknowledgement of the band, and Avis Bunnage's direct comments to the audience, the play shattered the ’realistic‘ conventions that still held sway in the West End, at the same time transgressing the distinction between ‘serious’ theatre and music hall (where the boundary of the proscenium was never respected obsequiously). Alec Patton, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, draws on original interviews with actors from the cast, a member of the first-night audience, and the leader of the band that accompanied the show to offer a re-assessment of the role of music and music hall in the original production of A Taste of Honey.

The Populist Palatial

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Music Hall

This chapter explores the West End music hall, which drew on a heterogeneous audience, drawing all classes in for a smart night out. The argument is that we can observe a cultural style that is called here the ‘populist palatial’, which the West End helped propagate. This meant flattering audiences through spectacular buildings and high profile performers. The chapter looks in particular at the London Pavilion music hall on Piccadilly Circus and at two music hall stars: Jenny Hill and the Great MacDermott. Music hall gave women a voice allowing them to be comedians and the source of knowing humour. MacDermott was associated with music hall jingoism and patriotism. West End music hall expressed something of the liberating set of emotions that urban mass culture released.

London's West End

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Sex Industry ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
The West ◽  
Street Life ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Dion Boucicault ◽  
The World ◽  
Oxford Street ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opera Houses

How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. From the Strand up to Oxford Street, the West End came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The reader will explore the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, a neighbourhood that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. The book tells the story of the great artists, actors, and entrepreneurs who made the West End: figures such as Gilbert and Sullivan, the playwright Dion Boucicault, the music hall artiste Jenny Hill, and the American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge who wanted to create the best shop in the world. We encounter the origins of the modern star system and celebrity culture. The book moves from the creation of Regent Street to the glory days of the Edwardian period when the West End was the heart of empire and the entertainment industry..

Bulgarian Culture after 1989

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-302
Author(s):  
Kiril Vassilev
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
The Social ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
Value Crisis

This article deals with the changes in Bulgarian culture after the fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria in 1989. The first sections sketch the state of the Bulgarian culture and society during the later years of the communism. They describe the change in official ideology, i.e. the return to nationalism. The controversial role of the Communist regime in the modernization process of society is analyzed, with its simultaneous modernization and counter-modernization heritage. Then we shift to the changes in society and culture that have taken place since the fall of the regime. Attention is focused on the new mass culture, the embodiment of the value crisis in which the post-Communist Bulgarian society is located. The radical transformations in the field of the so-called ‘high’ culture are examined, especially the financial difficulties and the overall change in the social status of arts and culture. The basic trauma of the Bulgarian culture embodied in the constantly returning feeling of being a cultural by-product of the West is brought out. The article concludes that Bulgarian post-Communist culture has failed to create a more complex and flexible image of the “Bulgarian” that can use the energies of globalization without feeling threatened by disintegration.

Shin Kabuki

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guohe Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Social Changes ◽  
The West ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Role Change ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
The Times ◽  
Performing Art ◽  
A Company

Shin Kabuki literally "new kabuki," a modern outgrowth of traditional kabuki and one of the fruits of Japan’s modernist theater movement. The term was first coined by Kasuyama Masao and later defined by Kagayama Naozō to mean plays written in the kabuki format but with Western ideas incorporated in to them and with literary merit. As used today, it refers to works written since the late Meiji period (1868–1912) by intellectuals who were not part of the kabuki establishment. These works were staged with kabuki’s apparatus but without such traditional kabuki acting and staging conventions as climactic poses (mie), stylized makeup, and quick role-change (hayagawari). Through these plays, kabuki came to be divided into "classical" (koten) and "new" (shin) categories. Following the Meiji Restoration, government leaders returning from trips to the West sought a potential counterpart to Western drama in Japan, as part of Japanese high culture suitable for entertaining the upper classes and visiting foreign dignitaries. This desire of the Meiji leaders coincided with indigenous modernist efforts to reform this traditional performing art to suit the times. This led to the appearance of zangiri-mono and katsureki-mono. However, following the death in 1893 of Kawakate Mokuami, who had provided most of the scripts for such reformative efforts, there was no playwright of comparable caliber to support the reform of kabuki. This gap, coupled with the growing influence of Western theater and the era’s great social changes, facilitated a transition away from the old practice—scripts were written exclusively by playwrights attached to a company—and the appearance of intellectual playwrights who were unrelated to kabuki.

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