British Theatre between the Wars, 1918–1939

by Edited by Clive Barker , Maggie B. Gale

• ISBN13: 9780521044509
• ISBN10: 0521044502
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Histories of British theatre between 1918 and 1939 have tended to marginalize the commercial and mainstream in favour of the literary or the politically motivated. This volume brings together a collection of essays that reflect both a far more complex theatre world than this strategy has allowed for, and scholarship on mainstream and alternative theatres in the 1920s and 1930s. Combining the popular with the commercial, the book includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare. With assessments of the representation of gender and sexuality in the theatre, this volume not only unveils hitherto neglected theatre practices but also places them in the context of a society undergoing rapid social and cultural change. It will appeal to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates and scholars interested in twentieth-century British theatre.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Notes on contributors

Introduction

Theatre and society: the Edwardian legacy, the First World War and the inter-war years

Body parts: the success of the thriller in the inter-war years

When men were men and women were women

Girl crazy: musicals and revue between the wars

Errant nymphs: women and the inter-war theatre

Blood on the bright young things: Shakespeare in the 1930s

The religion of socialism or a pleasant Sunday afternoon?: The ILP Arts

Delving the levels of memory and dressing up in the past

The ghosts of war: stage ghosts and time slips as a response to war

Index

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