International Theatre Companies Visiting America. Before the Hallams and the first American theatrical troupe, all theatre in the colonies consisted of visiting companies from abroad. But beginning in the late 19th century renowned theatres from Europe came to the States (sometimes as part of international tours) and found both money and fame. Leading the way was the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and its
Gilbert and Sullivan productions. Its founder, Richard D'Oyly Carte, and some members of the company first appeared in America in 1879 to offer
H.M.S. Pinafore and the world premiere of
The Pirates of Penzance. However, American performers were also enlisted in these casts, and American musicians were employed. This remained the practice for all its original Gilbert and Sullivan mountings in this country. The company as a whole did not appear in America until 1934, after Winthrop
Ames revived what had been a flagging interest in the Savoyard comic operas. Between then and its dissolution, the ensemble made numerous American visits. At first the tours were immensely successful and popular, and offered such great performers as Martyn Green, Derek Oldham, and Darrell Fancourt. However, in its last seasons its members and productions seemed tired and trapped in tradition, and the final tours were not commercial successes. Dublin's Abbey Theatre, founded by Miss E. F. Horniman in 1903, initially played in America in 1911 and offered new works by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, and John Millington Synge.
The Playboy of the Western World by Synge precipitated riots by hooligans offended at some of the depictions of Irish life. In New York, vegetables (including, of course, potatoes) and asafetida balls were hurled at the stage; in Philadelphia, the company and the rioters were arrested. The turmoil continued when the troupe appeared on a second visit in 1913. Both the plays and the acting received a mixed reception. When the Irish Players of the Abbey Theatre (as it was officially called) returned for several visits in the 1930s, the plays were no longer unfamiliar, and many of them had become accepted as modern classics. By then the ensemble playing was much admired, featuring performers such as Arthur Sinclair, Sara Allgood, and Barry Fitzgerald.
La Comédie Française, the world's oldest ongoing acting ensemble, founded in 1680, waited 275 years before making its initial American visit in 1955. Some critics were dismayed by the relatively safe, conservative repertory it presented, which consisted of Molière's
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Marivaux's
Arlequin poli par l'amour and his
Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, Beaumarchais's
Le Barbier de Seville, and Musset's
Un Caprice. Yet, as Louis
Kronenberger noted, the works were “done with not only every last nuance of phrasing and diction, but with a ballet lightness and wit.” On later visits in the 1960s and 1970s the troupe ranged more broadly, offering such classics as Corneille's
Le Cid, Montherlant's
La Reine Morte, and Feydeau's
La Puce a l'oreille. These subsequent visits have also offered several more Molière plays, but none by Racine. Among the notable performers who have appeared with the company have been Louis Seigner, Jacques Charon, and Robert Hirsch.
The Moscow Art Theatre, founded in 1898 by K.
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich‐Danchenko, first visited America during the 1922–23 season and created an excitement rarely paralleled in American theatre annals. Its repertory consisted of Tolstoy's
Tsar Fyodor Ivanovitch, Gorky's
The Lower Depths, Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard and
The Three Sisters, and Turgenieff's
The Lady from the Provinces, coupled with excerpts from Dostoevski's
The Brothers Karamazoff. Additional plays, including
Uncle Vanya, were offered the next season. The troupe's remarkable ensemble playing, according to one critic, raised “spiritual realism” to new heights of perfection. Its example also gave rise to another in the many recurrent movements to establish a permanent repertory company in America and played no small part in the early impetus behind the founding of the
Civic Repertory Theatre. Perhaps more importantly and enduringly, these tours gave most American playgoers their first exposure to the works of
Chekhov. The company again visited America in 1965, offering
The Cherry Orchard,
The Three Sisters, a dramatization of Gogol's
Dead Souls, and a piece of political propaganda,
Kremlin Chimes. The troupe was still admired for its realism and fine ensemble playing, but political considerations tempered the response.
The Old Vic, England's finest and most historic acting company until it was superseded in 1963 by the National Theatre, paid a highly praised visit to New York in 1946. Its repertory was
Henry IV, Parts I and II;
Uncle Vanya;
Oedipus; and
The Critic. The company included Laurence
Olivier, who offered his memorable Oedipus, Hotspur, and Justice Shallow; Ralph
Richardson, praised for his Falstaff; Joyce Redman; and Margaret
Leighton. Many critics felt that the company at the time was at its artistic height and that the ensemble playing had not been matched by any troupe since the visit of the Moscow Art Theatre more than two decades before. In 1956 and 1958 the company returned to offer two series of Shakespearean revivals (
Richard II,
Romeo and Juliet,
Macbeth, and
Troilus and Cressida in 1956;
Twelfth Night,
Hamlet, and
Henry V in 1958) and in its final visit in 1962 presented Shaw's
Saint Joan along with two more Shakespearean offerings. Although the roster of performers on these last visits included several distinguished performers, such as Rosemary
Harris, Barbara Jefford, John Neville, and Jeremy Brett, the consensus was that the acting lacked the glittering finish and intensity seen in 1946.
The Royal Shakespeare Company, an outgrowth of the Shakespearean theatre at Stratford‐on‐Avon in England, expanded its repertory to include non‐Shakespearean classics and modern plays when it opened a branch theatre in London. It has since come to be considered by many critics as the finest contemporary English acting ensemble. Although it has occasionally offered American playgoers examples of its Shakespearean productions since the mid‐1960s, its most successful offerings here have been non‐Shakespearean works. The most notable have been
Marat/Sade (1965); a gymnastic, almost psychedelic
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1971);
Sherlock Holmes (1974); and
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1981). These large‐cast productions were striking for the skillful fluidity and dramatic effectiveness with which numbers of people were moved, and testified to the excellence of such modern British directors as Peter
Brook and Trevor
Nunn. Among the rising performers seen in these mountings were Glenda Jackson, Patrick Magee, Ian Richardson, Ben Kingsley, and John
Wood. Other RSC productions were mounted in the 1980s and 1990s, though not necessarily with their London casts. Great Britain's other famous subsidized theatre company, the National Theatre of Great Britain, opened in London in 1963 as the successor to the
Old Vic. Today called the Royal National, it has rarely brought a full production to America, but many National hits, such as
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967),
The National Health (1974),
No Man's Land (1976),
Bedroom Farce (1979),
Amadeus (1980),
Plenty (1983), and
Wild Honey (1986), have been produced on Broadway, sometimes with players and the directors from the original English productions. The National's offshoot, the Young Vic, presented a diverse repertory of three plays in 1974 and has appeared again since then. Finally, some of the great Eastern theatre troupes have also visited the States on occasion, most memorably Kabuki and Bunraku companies from Japan and the Peking Opera from China.
