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Half In Earnest
''Half in Earnest'' is a musical comedy by Vivian Ellis adapted from ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' and other works of Oscar Wilde. It premiered at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania and the Olney Theatre in Maryland in 1957, featuring Anna Russell. The following year, a production opened the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry The Belgrade Theatre is a live performance venue in Coventry, England. It was the first civic theatre to be built in Britain after the Second World War and is now a Grade II listed building. Background Coventry was the fastest growing city in ... on March 27, 1958. References {{reflist 1957 musicals British musicals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vivian Ellis
Vivian John Herman Ellis, CBE (29 October 1903 – 19 June 1996) was an English musical comedy composer best known for the song " Spread a Little Happiness" and the Paul Temple theme " Coronation Scot". Life and work Ellis was born in Hampstead, London in 1903 and educated at Cheltenham College. He began a musical career as a concert pianist, but became a composer and lyricist. His grandmother, Julia Woolf, had also been a concert pianist as well as composing an opera, ''Carina''. He had great success with the foxtrot song "Over My Shoulder" in the early 20s. This led to further contributions of pieces for several revues in the 1920s. Another hit song was his "Yale Blues" which had a dance step called the "Yale" and became a craze in 1927 both in the UK, Europe and the US. He became well known in the London West End theatre community for providing the music and collaborating in the production of a large number of musical shows, spanning from 1925 to 1958. Ellis dominated th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Importance Of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde, the last of his four drawing-room plays, following ''Lady Windermere's Fan'' (1892), ''A Woman of No Importance'' (1893) and ''An Ideal Husband'' (1895). First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a Farce, farcical comedy depicting the tangled affairs of two young wikt:man about town, men about town who lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest while wooing the two young women of their affections. The play, celebrated for its wit and repartee, parodies contemporary dramatic norms, gently satirises late Victorian era, Victorian manners, and introduces – in addition to the two pairs of young lovers – the formidable Lady Bracknell, the fussy governess Miss Prism and the benign and scholarly Canon (title)#Church of England, Canon Chasuble. Contemporary reviews in Britain and overseas praised the play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Regarded by most commentators as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era, Wilde is best known for his 1890 Gothic fiction, Gothic philosophical fiction ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', as well as his numerous epigrams and plays, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bucks County Playhouse
The Bucks County Playhouse is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania. When the ''Hope Mills'' burned in 1790, Benjamin Parry rebuilt the grist mills as the ''New Hope Mills.'' The town was renamed for the Mill (grinding), mills. The building was saved from demolition in the 1930s. It was purchased and run by a group of people including playwrights Moss Hart and Kenyon Nicholson. Renovations converting the building into a theater began in 1938. The first production at the new Bucks County Playhouse was ''Springtime for Henry'' featuring Edward Everett Horton. It opened on July 1, 1939. The Bucks County Playhouse became a summer theater. It was the starting point for many actors and became a place where plays slated for Broadway theatre, Broadway were tried out. Neil Simon's ''Barefoot in the Park,'' starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley, had its premiere at the theater in 1963. The Bucks County Playhouse Conservancy, a public/private partnership, raised sufficient funds to re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olney Theatre Center
Located in Olney, Maryland, the Olney Theatre Center is one of the two official state theaters of Maryland. Olney Theatre Center is situated on in the middle of the Washington–Baltimore–Frederick "triangle." There are three indoor venues: the Historic Theatre, the Roberts Mainstage, and the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. There is also an outdoor venue, the Root Family Stage at Omi's Pavilion. The Roberts Mainstage seats 429 patrons, with a small theatre lab added in 1999. As of November 2023, Olney Theatre Center has won 28 Helen Hayes Awards since the award's founding in 1985 and received 208 nominations. It is one of only two theaters in the country to operate under an Actors' Equity Association Council of Stock Theaters (COST) contract. History In 1938, Olney Theatre was founded as a summer theater and restaurant by Stephen E. Cochran, attorney and judge Harold C. Smith, and theater manager Leonard B. McLaughlin."Ethel Barrymore Director of New Summer Theater". ''The W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Russell
Anna Russell (born Anna Claudia Russell-Brown; 27 December 191118 October 2006) was an English–Canadian singer and comedian. She gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best-known works are her concert performances and recordings of ''The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis)'' – a humorous 22-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' – and (on the same album) her parody ''How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.'' Life and career Early life Russell was born in Maida Vale, London, England,''Daily Telegraph'' obituarAnna Russell21 October 2006 and was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in Brussels and Paris. She studied at the Royal College of Music, where her piano teacher was Marmaduke Barton (whose wife's maiden name happened also to be Anna Russell). She had a difficult childhood, and particularly a difficult relationship with her mother, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belgrade Theatre
The Belgrade Theatre is a live performance venue in Coventry, England. It was the first civic theatre to be built in Britain after the Second World War and is now a Grade II listed building. Background Coventry was the fastest growing city in Britain between the First and Second World Wars. Its cramped medieval streets were becoming dangerously congested and overcrowded, and in 1938 the City Council appointed Donald Gibson to become the first city architect. The newly created City Architect's Department had ambitious plans, and the devastation of the Coventry Blitz allowed it more freedom to design an entirely new city centre. In 1955, Gibson resigned; extensive work had already taken place in the city centre, but a growing Coventry required further development. The person who took over from him, Arthur Ling, would be the designer of the Belgrade Theatre. Some versions of the overall plan for the city centre included three new theatres and cinemas, but during the 1950s it be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1957 Musicals
Events January * January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. * January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. * January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be Dismissal (cricket), dismissed for having handled the ball, in Test cricket. * January 9 – British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns. * January 10 – Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * January 11 – The African Convention is founded in Dakar. * January 14 – Kripalu Maharaj is named fifth Jagadguru (world teacher), after giving seven days of speeches before 500 Hindu scholars. * January 15 – The film ''Throne of Blood'', Akira Kurosawa's reworking of ''Macbeth'', is released in Japan. * January 20 ** Israel withdraws from the Sinai Peninsula (captured from Egypt on October 29, 1956). * January 26 – The Ibirapuera Planetarium (the first in the Southern Hemisphere) is inaugurated in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
