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Comedy Theatre
Comedy Theatre, London, in Panton Street, off the Haymarket. This theatre, seating 820 on four tiers, opened in 1881 and housed a series of light operas until in 1887 Beerbohm Tree took it over for his first venture into management. He was succeeded by Charles Hawtrey and then by Comyns Carr, under whom Winifred Emery and her husband Cyril Maude appeared in Sydney Grundy's Sowing the Wind (1893) and The New Woman (1894) and Pinero's The Benefit of the Doubt (1895). A lean period followed until in 1902 Lewis Waller produced Tarkington and Sutherland's Monsieur Beaucaire which ran for over 400 performances. Gerald Du Maurier had a big success with Hornung's Raffles (1906), and Marie Tempest was also successful in Somerset Maugham's Mrs Dot (1908) and Penelope (1909). One of the longest runs was scored by John Hartley Manners's Peg o' My Heart (1914). During the First World War the Comedy was occupied by revue, and its inter-war history was unremarkable. Though slightly damaged by bombing in the Second World War it continued in use. In 1956 it became a club to facilitate the staging of plays which had failed to obtain the Lord Chamberlain's licence, among them Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (1956), Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy (1957), and Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). In 1959 the club was disbanded and Peter Shaffer's first play Five Finger Exercise was seen, followed by a dramatization of E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India (1960). Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967) was widely acclaimed, but farce kept the theatre open from 1968 to 1972. Later productions included Alan Ayckbourn's Time and Time Again (1972) with Tom Courtenay; the musical The Rocky Horror Show (1979); David Storey's Early Days (1980) with Ralph Richardson and Miller's The Crucible (1981), both transferred from the Cottesloe Theatre; and O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet (1988) with Vanessa Redgrave.
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Cite this article
PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre1.html PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre1.html |
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Comedy Theatre
Comedy Theatre, New York, on West 41st Street, between Broadway and Avenue of the Americas. Built by the Shuberts as a small, intimate playhouse, it opened in 1909 with Zangwill's The Melting Pot and in 1912 saw the first production in New York of Shaw's Fanny's First Play. The Washington Square Players made some of their early appearances there, as did Ruth Draper, who in 1928–9 created a record with five months' solo playing. In 1937–8, renamed the Mercury, the theatre housed a stimulating season by Orson Welles which included Julius Caesar in modern dress, in which he played Brutus. Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, Shaw's Heartbreak House, in which he played Captain Shotover, and Büchner's Danton's Death, in which he played St Just. In 1939 the Artef Players appeared in Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta and other Yiddish plays. The building was demolished in 1942.
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Cite this article
PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre2.html PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre2.html |
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Comedy Theatre
Comedy Theatre, Leningrad, see AKIMOV.
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Cite this article
PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre.html PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Comedy Theatre." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-ComedyTheatre.html |
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