DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Old Vic Theatre

A History

George Rowell author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:3rd Nov '05

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Old Vic Theatre cover

This is the first book to chronicle fully the history of London's Old Vic Theatre. After Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, the Old Vic is London's oldest theatre, with a continuous history since 1818. Drawing on important archives, both here (notably the Royal Victoria Hall's) and in the United States, George Rowell sheds new light on the management, audience, productions, and players. In particular he offers fresh information on its early years, when such famous figures as Edmund Kean and William Charles Macready appeared there, and Paganini gave his farewell concert. Throughout its history the Old Vic has served a number of purposes and provided many brands of entertainment, including spectacle, pantomime, 'blood-and-thunder melodrama', and variety. Subsequently it was used as a 'temperance hall' and working-men's college. The Theatre was the first permanent home of opera in English as well as British ballet, and, above all, the birthplace of the world-famous Old Vic Company.

"George Rowell provides an engaging look at the one remaining Regency theatre still in operation. In a humorous, conversational style, Rowell describes the major figures who contributed to the fortunes of the Old Vic Theatre from its beginnings in 1816." M. Susan Anthony, Albion
"...a valuable contribution to nineteenth century theatre history...[T]his record...lays the ground work for further development by future scholars." Jane Baldwin, Theatre History Studies

ISBN: 9780521021593

Dimensions: 229mm x 157mm x 14mm

Weight: 365g

252 pages