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From next week, there'll be regular updates on the Merry Shrews project on the new Facebook page as well as the blog entries here.  Keep up to date at https://www.facebook.com/merryshrews

Benson in London

 This week I've been concentrating on the year 1890 for which I had very few database entries. Generally speaking, my research is centred on Benson's touring to the provinces but sometimes it is necessary to look at the bigger picture and see how the two theatrical centres of activity of London and Stratford each had an impact on his work.    Although not a good businessman, Benson - or his management team - seem to have had a canny understanding of the principal of the USP (unique selling-point)  and so, in the early years of the Company, advertisements would often point out that the props and scenery - and indeed the actors Benson toured with - were 'the Globe Company'.  

There have been three theatres of that name in London, the most recent, of course, being the replica of Shakespeare’s theatre, created by actor Sam Wanamaker which opened in 1997.  The other Globe Theatre – in Shaftesbury Avenue – changed its name to the Gielgud  in 1994, partly to avoid any confusion with the South Bank Globe project.  However, the Globe Theatre that Benson leased in 1889 was at the end of the Aldwych on the site now occupied by BBC Bush house.  A large theatre with a capacity of 1,5000, it backed onto the Opera Comique and the initially the wall between the two theatres was allegedly so thin that noise from one could be heard in the other!

Perhaps the obvious most attraction of the Globe for Benson was the name, with its automatic association with Shakespeare: the theatre's act-drop portrayed a image of Stratford upon Avon. Benson appears to have made a popular success of this season: opening on the 19^th of December with his new production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, he was still performing the play to audiences the week beginning April 21^st.  The Dundee Courier recorded the one hundredth performance of the play and commented on the twice weekly matinees and the demand for seats.

Benson hated long runs of a single play, believing that they led to stale and lifeless performances.  To combat this, he changed the programme for Thursday and Friday evenings, giving first The Taming of the Shrew, then Hamlet and finally Othello.  The London press were cautious in their praise, admiring the intention - if not always the execution - of the season. However, Dream  seems to have been a success with audiences, so much so that the production would form the back-bone of the Benson touring rep for many years.

Benson left London in May 1890 to return to  provincial touring, having made at least a dint in the stranglehold of the established London management over Shakespeare and he had also shown that there was an audience for the rather neglected 'fairy play'.  Beerbohm Tree's famous production of the play - complete with live rabbits -wouldn't make an appearance until ten years later, beating Benson's 'century' of performances by a narrow margin.  The Globe Theatre was demolished in 1902 to make way for the restructured Aldwych.  

Side entrance in Newcastle Street.

Exciting news coming very soon...!

I've been away from blogging for what feels like a long time, and not through choice: life and work took priority in April and May, as I knew they would do, and I had to put my Benson project on pause.
However, this week something very exciting has happened.  I'm not at liberty to divulge what, just yet, but it does mean that I'm going to be very busy with Benson in the months to come!  More news will follow...

In the meantime, having missed Shakespeare's birthday, I thought I'd add this  - taken in July 1916, it shows Benson and Constance in London, at a costumed fete at the Temple.  I love the fact that FRB has his overcoat on over his doublet: it looks more like November than July!

Another Benson

This week I've been away in the Lake District, but Benson has still been at the forefront of my mind.  The fit -up 'South' company visited  Keswick, Ambleside and Bowness and the Principal and  'North' Companies made several visits to Kendal, Penrith and Ulverston throughout the years Benson was touring.  Keswick, in particular, still has a strong theatrical heritage through the 'Theatre By the Lake' a repertory theatre in the most stunning of settings: http://www.theatrebythelake.com/

W. A. S. Benson - Frank Benson's elder brother by four years - was an architect and designer who made many items of furniture and lighting for Morris & Co and ended up as a Director of the company after Morris's death. The family resemblance between William and Frank is clear in the photo below.  He is well known as a member of the Arts and Crafts movement and his designs for electric lighting are now collectors' pieces. https://www.blackwell.org.uk/.

 

Some of these are on show at Blackwell, a fabulous Arts and Crafts House in the Lake District, just outside Bowness and are truly lovely: the anticipate the Art Nouveau movement with stylised plant forms and the Vaseline glass shades. Blackwell is a delight: a cross between Morris and Mackintosh and well worth a visit:

Interestingly, Shakespeare's Globe are taking their 'fit up' production of Romeo and Juliet to the grounds of Blackwell in the Summer this year, following in the footsteps of  Benson's summer 'pastoral' performances.  http://www.oldlaundrytheatre.co.uk/event.php?event=149&cat=3

Stratford upon Avon in the Spring

Stratford upon Avon is wonderful in any season, but it is especially beautiful in Spring.  For the last two years I've spent 24 hours there as part of my Easter holiday - it's a kind of 'cultural retreat'.  I stay in B&B near the theatre, walk, eat cake, talk to as few people as I can get away with, go to the theatre (of course!) and then spend the second day in the Birthplace Trust library and archives reading room, trying to cram a year's research into five and a bit hours...

The Birthplace Library holds the archives of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and has a lot of material relating to Frank Benson which I'm slowly becoming more familiar with.  This time, I looked at two prompt books for As You Like It and Taming of the Shrew and began to sift through some of the company's accounts from 1909 and 1910 which made for quite alarming reading because Benson was clearly touring at a ridiculous level of financial loss.

Stratford is a very spiritual place, for me. It's hard to explain it without it sounding silly, but the first time I went there I felt as if I'd returned home to somewhere I'd always been missing.  It has the same impact for me still, today, almost thirty years on, and there's a sense of theatrical history there which is almost tangible. Leaving it is always a wrench. I'm saving some of the pictures for a post later in the month about the old Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, but these give something of the flavour of Stratford in Spring...  I wish I could  bottle the scent and sound of the place as well!

Holy Trinity Churchyard; The 'Gower' Hamlet; Canal Basin and Avon bankside looking towards the Church:
 April 10th 2015

Dumfries, 1886

On March 8th 1886, the Benson company started a week's performances at the Theatre Royal in Dumfries, the first visit Benson made to the town.  The photographs here have come from 'Burns' Scotland' website and show the theatre as it was in 1900.  I love old photos of theatres.
This theatre, often cited as being the oldest working theatre in Scotland opened on Shakespeare Street in 1792 and Robert Burns and J M Barrie are amongst the famous names connected with its history.

Renovated in the 1890s (by our friend Mr Phipps!) the theatre was purchased in 1959 by the Dumfries Guild of Players.  It was threatened with demolition in 2006 and again with closure in 2011.  However, finance was secured for renovations in 2013 and the theatre has just launched a fund raising campaign to enable them to afford the 'finishing touches'.  They hope to reopen in time for this year's pantomime.  (Hopefully the resident ghosts who were featured in  'Mostly Ghostly's Theatre Event' haven't been too inconvenienced by works!)

It's worrying to see how close it came to closure: interestingly, the theatre was considered to have little architectural value i n 2006 but by 2011 was cited as being a rare example of a surviving Georgian theatre - a salutatory example of how opinions can differ.  My last trip to Dumfries was in 2005 and we walked past the theatre on our way back to the station: it looked in need of a lot of TLC.  I look forward to revisiting it when it reopens!

(You can support the fund here: https://fundly.com/help-us-finish-our-new-building#gallery/2)

 http://www.burnsscotland.com/items/i/image-taken-from-glass-plate-negative-of-the-theatre-royal,-dumfries-c-1900.aspx 

Edinburgh February 1893

Benson made many visits during his career to Edinburgh, often for two week seasons, and always performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre.  Like the Waterford Theatre, the Edinburgh  Royal Lyceum (named after Irving’s Theatre in London) is still operating as a theatre today, now with its own resident theatre company.  Benson first visited the Lyceum in 1888, five years after it had opened.  Yet another auditorium designed by the prolific C.J Phipps, the theatre reputedly cost £17, 000 to build.  

On February 15th 1893, Benson presented a week of plays including Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night,  Richard III and Hamlet as well as ‘Old English’ comedies, The Rivals and School for Scandal.  The following week was a full week of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Benson had originally produced his ‘Grand Production’ of the Dream in 1889 for a six week season at the Globe Theatre where it had been very favourably reviewed by the national press.  The Pall Mall Gazette, in particular, praised Benson’s ambitious intentions: ‘There has been no ‘scamping’ behind the scenes at the Globe – no half measures in the matter of mounting.  On the contrary, the play has been put upon the stage with as much care as if it were intended run for a year.’  

Benson would go on to use the fact that this was a London production in much of his publicity for the play and would recruit local ‘elves and sprites’ from each town the production visited to be trained up for the performance.    Benson’s production obviously proved popular in Edinburgh, returning the following year for a further week’s performances.