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List of contents
List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Introduction Maggie B. Gale; 1. Theatre and society: the Edwardian legacy, the First World War and the inter-war years Clive Barker; 2. Body parts: the success of the thriller in the inter-war years John Stokes; 3. When men were men and women were women John Deeney; 4. Girl crazy: musicals and revue between the wars James Ross Moore; 5. Errant nymphs: women and the inter-war theatre Maggie B. Gale; 6. Blood on the bright young things: Shakespeare in the 1930s Tony Howard; 7. The religion of socialism or a pleasant Sunday afternoon?: The ILP Arts Guild Ros Merkin; 8. Delving the levels of memory and dressing up in the past Mick Wallis; 9. The ghosts of war: stage ghosts and time slips as a response to war Clive Barker; Index.
About the author
Clive Barker has had a long career combining practical work and academic teaching. His ideas on actor training were published as Theatre Games in 1977. He is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly published by Cambridge University Press.Maggie B. Gale is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of West End Women; women on the London stage 1918-1962 (1996) and joint editor with Viv Gardner of Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories, New Historiographies (2000).
Summary
This volume initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth-century British theatre cultures. Combining the popular with the commercial, it 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.
