Sunday afternoon
Sunday afternoon began with Anne Varty (RHUL) giving a glimpse of the relationship between Oscar Wilde and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (who produced two of his plays at the Haymarket) and in particular an attempt by a young man who had acquired a love letter Wilde had written to Lord Alfred Douglas to blackmail Wilde. She was followed by Catherine Hindson (Bristol University) who spoke about the way in which the theatre, and the Haymarket in particular, raised money for charity, especially the Actors' Orphanage Fund.
Simon Sladen (University of Winchester), BTG reviewer and panto specialist, taking the title "It's Behind Us?" looked (you've guessed it) at the West End panto. Thus far, the speakers had been dealing largely with theatre history, but Simon was comparing the past, with its established pantomime tradition, with the present day. West End pantomime has disappeared and he set out to investigate the reasons why.
The Haymarket had been a popular venue for panto in the Victorian era but, although the Independent described the Haymarket 2008 Treasure Island as "posh panto" it really did not fit the genre. Indeed it marked 120 years since the previous real panto had been seen there—and 200 since the celebrated transfer of Covent Garden's Mother Goose in 1808.
Pantomime flourished at Drury Lane from Augustus Harris's Bluebeard in 1879 right up to 1937 and at the Palladium after the Second World War. With the odd exception, the Old Vic Aladdin with Ian McKellen, two at the Barbican and some rather well-worn provincial pantos that had already played many seasons brought in to fill gaps at the Dominion and on the Strand, panto has not been a viable proposition.
A panto with the production values associated with the West End is expensive, but panto, by its very nature, is topical, vernacular and verbal, not easy for the audiences of foreign tourists that keep the mega musicals running and earning money. The headline names from British television and comedy who lead panto casts are largely unknown to tourist audiences. Musicals don't need names, they are marketed as the show, you can recast them, but that is difficult to do to with panto and even a home audience thinks of them as seasonal so the potential for a long, open-ended run is non-existent.
That doesn't mean that panto doesn't flourish elsewhere, away from the West End, away from London, with York probably leading the field, while outside the centre, Hackney Empire and Theatre Royal Stratford East have enviable reputations for the quality of their pantos. It is sobering to be told, though, that, whereas at one time a local panto used to provide the income to support a repertory season, Stratford East, though valuable in bringing in a new audience demographic who return to taste what else the theatre has to offer, doesn't turn a profit.
The first day ended with guest speaker John Earl, former director of the Theatres Trust, the body with a government remit to protect and preserve our theatres speaking on the physical creation of the West End, of Theatreland, a name which seems to have taken root following its use in a 1915 London Underground promotion for an area which has the densest concentration of theatres anywhere in the world.
Although the Theatres Act of 1843, ending the privilege of the patent theatres, made it possible for any theatre to stage plays, it did not lead to a theatre building boom. It was supper room music halls that mushroomed in the next 20 years. The big theatre boom came in 1885-19. The road works that created Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road cutting through dense earlier road patterns left spaces, sometimes awkwardly shaped, that provided sites for new theatres. The creation of Kingsway and the Aldwych provided sites for more, including the Stoll, demolished to build an office block.
The post-war increase in central London land values, especially with the office building boom, saw theatres lost and many more threatened—there was then no protection, though today listed building status and the laws concerning change of use and the creation of the Theatres Trust provide some. There was time for a passing glance at architects Sprague and Matcham and to consider the 11 new theatres build since 1924, but a mere taste of John's wide knowledge of theatre architecture and history.