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Lyric Theatre, London
The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It was built for the producer Henry Leslie, who financed it from the profits of the light opera hit, '' Dorothy'', which he transferred from its original venue to open the new theatre on 17 December 1888. Under Leslie and his early successors the house specialised in musical theatre, and that tradition has continued intermittently throughout the theatre's existence. Musical productions in the theatre's first four decades included ''The Mountebanks'' (1892), '' His Excellency'' (1894), '' The Duchess of Dantzig'' (1903), ''The Chocolate Soldier'' (1910) and '' Lilac Time'' (1922). Later musical shows included '' Irma La Douce'' (1958), '' Robert and Elizabeth'' (1964), '' John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert'' (1974), '' Blood Brothers'' (1983), ''Five Guys Named Moe'' (1990) and ''Thriller – Live'' (2009). Many non-musical productions have been staged at the Lyric, from Shakespeare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly Circus to Cambridge Circus, it is in the City of Westminster, and from Cambridge Circus to New Oxford Street, it is in the London Borough of Camden. Shaftesbury Avenue was built between 1877 and 1886 by the architect George Vulliamy and the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, to provide a north–south traffic artery through the crowded districts of St. Giles and Soho. It was also part of a slum clearance measure, to push impoverished workers out of the city centre. Although the street's construction was stalled by legislation requiring rehousing some of these displaced residents, overcrowding persisted. --> Charles Booth's Poverty Map shows the neighbourhood makeup shortly after Shaftesbury Avenue opened. The avenue is generally considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Brothers (musical)
''Blood Brothers'' is a musical with book, lyrics, and music by Willy Russell. The story is a contemporary nature versus nurture plot, revolving around fraternal twins Mickey and Eddie, who were separated at birth, one subsequently being raised in a wealthy family, the other in a poor family. The different environments take the twins to opposite ends of the social spectrum, one becoming a councillor, and the other unemployed and in prison. They both fall in love with the same girl, causing a rift in their friendship and leading to the tragic death of both brothers. Russell says that his work was based on a one-act play that he read as a child "about two babies switched at birth ... it became the seed for Blood Brothers." Originally developed as a school play, ''Blood Brothers'' debuted in Liverpool before Russell transferred it to the West End for a short run in 1983. The musical won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical and went on to a year-long national tour before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellen Terry
Dame Alice Ellen Terry, (27 February 184721 July 1928), was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics. In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in ''The Merchant of Venice'' and Beatrice in '' Much Ado About Nothing''. She and Irving also toured with great success ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleonora Duse
Eleonora Giulia Amalia Duse ( , ; 3 October 185821 April 1924), often known simply as Duse, was an Italian actress, rated by many as the greatest of her time. She performed in many countries, notably in the plays of Gabriele d'Annunzio and Henrik Ibsen. Duse achieved a unique power of conviction and verity on the stage through intense absorption in the character, "eliminating the self" as she put it, and letting the qualities emerge from within, not imposed through artifice. Life and career Duse was born in Vigevano, Lombardy, in 1858 to Alessandro Vincenzo Duse (1820–1892) and Angelica Cappelletto (1833–1906). Both her father and her grandfather, Luigi, were actors from Chioggia, near Venice, and she joined the troupe at age four. Due to poverty, she initially worked continually, traveling from city to city with whichever troupe her family was currently engaged. She came to fame in Italian versions of roles made famous by Sarah Bernhardt, such as ''La Dame aux caméli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnston Forbes-Robertson
Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (16 January 1853 – 6 November 1937''Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, Beauty And Grace in Acting'', Obituaries, '' The Times'', 8 November 1937.) was an English actor and theatre manager and husband of actress Gertrude Elliot. He was considered the finest Hamlet of the Victorian era and one of the finest actors of his time, despite his dislike of the job and his lifelong belief that he was temperamentally unsuited to acting. Early life and education Born in London, he was the eldest of the eleven children of John Forbes-Robertson, a theatre critic and journalist from Aberdeen, and his wife Frances. One of his sisters, Frances (1866–1956), and three of his brothers, Ian Forbes-Robertson (1859–1936), Norman Forbes-Robertson (1858–1932) and John Kelt (Eric Forbes-Robertson) (1865–1935), also became actors. Through his wife Gertrude Elliot, he was the brother-in-law of famed actress Maxine Elliott, the uncle of Roy Harrod the economist, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Tempest
Dame Mary Susan Etherington, (15 July 1864 – 15 October 1942), known professionally as Marie Tempest, was an English singer and actress. Tempest became a famous soprano in late Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere. She was, at times, her own theatre manager during a career spanning 55 years. She was also instrumental in the founding of the actors' union Equity in Britain. Life and career Tempest was born in London. Her parents were Edwin Etherington (1838–1880), a stationer, and his wife, Sarah Mary (''née'' Castle). She had a sister, Florence Etherington, who married the theatre manager Michael Levenston. Tempest was educated at Midhurst School and an Ursuline convent in Tildonk, Belgium. Later, she studied music in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as a singing pupil of Manuel García, the tutor of Jenny Lind, Mathilde Marchesi and Charles Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his distinguished entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film '' The Madness of King George'' (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award. Bennett was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University, where he studied history and performed with the Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue '' Beyond the Fringe'' at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame and later a Special Tony Award. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time, his first stage play, '' Forty Years On'', being produced in 1968. He also became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their first performance. More than 40 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or by the Royal Shakespeare Company since his first hit '' Relatively Speaking'' opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967. Major successes include '' Absurd Person Singular'' (1975), '' The Norman Conquests'' trilogy (1973), ''Bedroom Farce'' (1975), ''Just Between Ourselves'' (1976), '' A Chorus of Disapproval'' (1984), '' Woman in Mind'' (1985), '' A Small Family Business'' (1987), '' Man of the Moment'' (1988), ''House'' & ''Garden'' (1999) and ''Private Fears in Public Places'' (2004). His plays have won numerous awards, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan (10 June 191130 November 1977) was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background.Geoffrey Wansell. ''Terence Rattigan'' (London: Fourth Estate, 1995); He wrote ''The Winslow Boy'' (1946), '' The Browning Version'' (1948), '' The Deep Blue Sea'' (1952) and '' Separate Tables'' (1954), among many others. A troubled homosexual who saw himself as an outsider, Rattigan wrote a number of plays which centred on issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships, or a world of repression and reticence. Early life Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington,Wansell, p. 13. London, of Irish extraction. He had an elder brother, Brian. They were the grandsons of Sir William Henry Rattigan, a notable India-based jurist and later a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for North-East Lanarkshire. His father was Frank Rattigan CM ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as '' |
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of dramatic action, language, and visual composition. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his '' The Red Room'' (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. In Sweden, Strindberg is known as an essayist, painter, poet, and especially as a novelist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Nobel Prize in Literature, literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of Realism (theatre), realism, earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The tragedy ''Long Day's Journey into Night'' is often included on lists of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's ''A Streetcar Named Desire (play), A Streetcar Named Desire'' and Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman''. O'Neill's plays were among the first to include speeches in American English vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. They struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusion and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known (''Ah, Wilderness!'').The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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