Edwardian Musical Comedy

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Cover of the Vocal Score

Edwardian Musical Comedies are those British musical theatre shows from the period between the 1890s, when Gilbert and Sullivan began to lose their dominance, to the rise of the American musicals by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Jerome Kern following the First World War.

1 Description of the genre
2 Notes
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Description of the genre

Edwardian musicals span the late Victorian era and capture the optimism, energy and good humour of the new century and the Edwardian era. The Gaiety Theatre's well-loved burlesquess were coming to an end, and so were the run of phenomenally successful Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Light romantic comic operas like Dorothy showed that audiences were ready for something new.

The first Edwardian musical comedy was In Town (1892), and the last was, perhaps, The Maid of the Mountains (1916).^[1] The major composers of the genre were Sidney Jones (The Geisha), Ivan Caryll (Our Miss Gibbs), Howard Talbot (A Chinese Honeymoon), Leslie Stuart (Florodora), Paul Rubens (Miss Hook of Holland) and, most popular of all, Lionel Monckton (The Quaker Girl). The shows were a mixture of the prosaic, many being set amongst the working class of London, and the exotic, with most of the British Empire appearing in one or another of these shows. Often, they were both, featuring stolid British types and their misunderstandings and adventures with strange 'Johnny Foreigners'. Generally, the book, lyrics and music were each written by different people, which was a first for the musical stage, although now this is the usual way of doing things.

Phyllis Dare in The Arcadians

The chief glories of Edwardian musical comedies lie in their musical scores. At their best, these combined the delicacy and sophistication of operetta with the robust tunefulness of the musical hall. The Arcadians is generally regarded as the masterpiece of the genre^[2] The composers were Monckton and Talbot, both at the height of their powers (which makes Talbot's frequent omission from the credits even more iniquitous). The story, about the havoc wreaked when truth-telling Arcadians arrive in corrupt London, neatly parallels the position of Edwardian musical comedies in theatrical history, with operetta-singing Arcadians, representing the past, meeting with music hall-singing Londoners, representing the future. It is this tension that makes the shows of this period so enjoyable: sophistication with the common touch.

Edwardian musical comedies were frequently built around a resident company of artists, as the Savoy Operas had been, which included a number of the greatest stars of the musical stage - including such actresses as Marie Tempest, Gertie Millar, Lily Elsie, Ellaline Terriss and Phyllis Dare, leading men such as Hayden Coffin, Harry Grattan and Rutland Barrington, and comics such as George Grossmith, Jr., Huntley Wright and Edmund Payne.

George Edwardes

The first theatres to host these shows were The Gaiety and Daly's Theatre, both presided over by George 'The Guv'nor' Edwardes, the Cameron Mackintosh of the Edwardian stage. American producer Charles Frohman, and actor-managers like Seymour Hicks and George Grossmith, Jr. were responsible for numerous other shows. Scores were constantly refreshed and re-arranged, often by a number of different composers and lyricists, to keep audiences coming back. Important writers included Adrian Ross, Harry Greenbank, Percy Greenbank, Owen Hall, and Oscar Asche.

The Edwardian musical comedy was very much a British phenomenon, but some of the shows repeated their success abroad, both in America and in Europe. Most notable among these was The Geisha, which proved even more popular on the European continent than The Mikado or Dorothy had.^[3]

[edit] Notes

^ Ganzl, Kurt, "Musicals", London: Carlton (1995), p.56. ISBN 0 74752 381 9; Hyman, Alan, "The Gaiety Years", London: Cassell (1975), p. 64. ISBN 0 304 29372 5
^ .Ganzl, Kurt (1995), p. 72.
^ Ganzl (1995), pp. 66-67.