Interesting theatrical bits (2). YIKES!!!!! Serious stuff!

This developed into a miraculous voyage of discovery .. read on!

I'm going to start this entry, for 'interesting bits', and, instead of loading my desktop with the fruits of my daily trawl and toil, I shall put them in here, until I judge the post is getting unwieldy, and then go public. So here goes with today's bits.

No 1. TOCH AND TARD 

OK. A comedy act. A way out 'eccentric' comedy act. Of any consequence. Oh, very definitely. They were a much admired acrobatic act 'd'une rare originalité' for twenty years in the French music halls, in the north of England and occasionally further afield.

They were undoubtedly French -- although they sometimes billed themselves, fashionably, as 'barristes excentriques américans' and as being of the London halls -- and I would guess from the southern part of France, or even north Africa. For that is where I spot them, in 1899, for the first time, playing their 'horizontal bar, knockabout, burlesque wrestling and burlesque hand balancing' act. 

Oh, I should add that 'Toch' was apparently a real name (Mons J H Toch) which has a southern ring to it. 'Tard'? Who knows. I thought it was a play on 'tot et tard' (sooner and later), but I guess he could have been Tardieu or the likes.

So, 1899 Casino Music Hall, Algiers. Next sighting Palais d'hiver, Pau, then Casino des Arts Lyons and at Cannes. 1901 seems to have been their first appearance in Paris, at the Cirque d'hiver. Circus Plège, Nancy, Casino, Brest, Palais de Cristal, Marseille, Casino d'éte, Oran ('le clou de la soirée ce fut certainement le début des très remarquables acrobates qui s’appellent les Toch et Tard, deux barristes tout à fait extraordinaires dans leur travail tout de force ef d’élégance et dont la parodie des luttes fait une des joies de la soirée'), the Jardin de Vichy, Bordeaux, the Eden Concert, Nimes .. and back to Paris on the bill at the Ambassadeurs with Mayol with their impersonation 'aussi savoureuse que cocasse d'un combat d'athlètes' . 'Savoureuse?'.

In 1904 I see them for the first time in Britain, at Burnley's Empire Music Hall, then at Manchester, Leeds, York ... in 1910 in Vienna and Linz ... and, seemingly with the same act and I presume the same men under the same titles, for a long stint at L'Olympia in 1916-7. My last sighting is at Asnières in 1919.

Maybe some day I will discover who they were ... or someone else will!

No2. The vendor of this photo has had some trouble deciphering the lady's signature. I also.

But I do know about The Tramps. It was a music-hall sketch produced in 1896 (10 December) at the West London Theatre. The author was one Birmingham-born William McCullough (ka Brien McCullough) a small-time actor, impersonator and theatre manager (1850-1911) who penned a number of such pieces (Light o' Day, Forgive and Forget, The Anti-Gambler) which he played round this halls with 'his company'. That company featured as leading lady one Nellie Nelson, who I suspect was his wife née Sarah Ann Moore (1857-1932).

It was a simple, old fashioned piece put together to feature McCullough as Jerry, an itinerant umbrella-mender who, under the influence of a scheming villain, accepts to murder the legal heir to a Lord, but then saves the child. Jerry and the boy Reggie are the tramps. Of course virtue triumphs, and the illegal heir is poisoned, after Jerry and Reggie have spent the sketch running the gamut.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone but the McCulloughs ever played the piece, or that it was ever given by amateurs, so I have no idea when Lillian could have played Reggie in Luton. Maybe the story will come to light one day.

No 3. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK pantomime at the Prince of Wales, Birmingham, 1910. 

And what a ritzy cast!  Ada Reeve and Ethel Haydon from the Gaiety Theatre et al. George Robey (Ethel's husband) as dame, Barry Lupino and good old Tom Shale ...

No4 A wondrous selection of letters from which I found this one the outstanding jewel!

8 December 1832. The great bass and impresario Giuseppe de Begnis has taken a little opera company to the provinces and to Scotland, playing Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Il Fanatico per la Musica and Don Giovanni. Three staple piece of his repertoire which each featured a large comic role buffo role for the star.  Le Nozze di Figaro and Agnese were also carried.

His travelling companions ('a group of transcendental talent') were Joséphine De Méric, prima donna, Donzelli tenor, Giubeli bass, plus Deville, Arigotti, Galli and the boss's not exactly trandescent pupil Miss Waters, plus an 'orchestra' of six. And a necessary 'Miss Phillips of Drury Lane' to play Donna Elvira. Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, the 'most superb operatic force ever brought to Edinburgh ...' were visited between September and December.

The operation was a highly significant, taking a unit opera company to places where such a thing was unheard of.

Madame De Méric clearly didn't have a very precisely kept engagment book. She was apparently expected back at Drury Lane, under Captain Polhill, before her time with de Begnis was over! All was, however, seemingly neatly arranged. De Begnis was back at the Italian opera, and Mme de Méric was suing the Italian Opera for unpaid salary, signing for another season with the new management and giving her Donna Anna to the Leporello of Henry Phillips (in English, for the first time) at Drury Lane by February.

In the same web-shop I found this. A manuscript list of F C Burnand's early works made by ... F C Burnand!

Well, many years ago I completed a (musical) work list for Sir F B.  Let's hope I didn't foul up!

1854 Villikins and his Dinah (pasticcio)

1856 Lord Lovel (pasticcio)

1857 Alonzo the Brave, or Faust and the Fair Imogene (pasticcio)

1860 Dido (pasticcio arr Hayward) St James's Theatre 23 March

1860 Light and Shade (various) drawing-room entertainment Hanover Square Rooms 21 December

1861 The King of the Merrows, or the Prince and the Piper (pasticcio) Olympic Theatre 26 December

Well, I don't think that the farce played at Worthing or in his tutor's pupil room at Eton counts! Pity he didn't give dates for the ADC productions.

We agree that Black-Eyed Susan and Ixion (qv) were his greatest successes. But fascinating to know that he got 25% of the profits ... an enormous £2,000, and that his next best burlesque was Paris at the Strand. What a grand piece of ephemera!

And yet another from the incredible shop of margyandmax

The other great burlesque writer of the era, William Brough. Biography and worklist in my Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre. 7 April 1860, the Lyceum was playing his burlesqiue The Forty Thieves.  The addressee of the note seems to be the popular Frederick Guest Tomlins, 'secretary to the Shakespeare Society', author and lecturer on The Nature and State of the English Drama, editor of Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper, managing director of the 'Athenaeum Institute for Authors', 'Clerk of the Painter-Stainers Company, and various other things theatrical, jounalistic and charitable. 'The well-known organist and critic'. 'That acute Shakespearian critic' . Born Lambeth 1804. Died Queenhithe 21 September 1867. Good heavens, he's in the DNB!

This one needs more work. No date, just 'Theatre Royal, Glasgow', and for addressee: 'Dear Guvnor'. Shall be with you on Monday next. Have a rehearsal of Paul Pry .. but I  sha'n't be there as can only leave here Sunday at half past eight in the evening. Play another piece before Paul Pry, making mine the second... 

Mr Brook were you ever in Glasgow? I never was in such a filthy hole. Sheffield is a paradise to it. Tell Baby I shall bring her home a new dress same as ?Pops,  for there is nothing else I can bring them. I can't even get snuff for Paul (Pry?) under two shillings the same as we see in London for ninepence  ... Sims Reeves comes next week and wants seven rooms for himself and wife and kids? times six ...

And its signed ... what?  And I suppose the date is Wednesday 26 May ... or November ...

Well, I can try ... and ... YES ????!!!!! I was just about to give up when I came upon this. The Cider Cellars, Maiden Lane ... performer and  treasurer H G Brooks. 'Miss Baby Jordan's Singular Revelations of Fast Life'  ... Kelly from the Coal Hole in his Wrightsonian realisation of Paul Pry with tableaux vivants and singing ... August 1861 ...   Hmmm. 'Baby Jordan'? Olivia Jordan? Widow of the fled Richard Brinsley Sheridan jr ...?