Dplinton Amendedphd Thesis 2016
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The Construction and Representation of National and Racial Identities in London West End Revue 1910-1930 David Paul Linton Goldsmiths College University of London English and Comparative Literatures Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. David Linton London, March, 2016. 2 Acknowledgements There are many people who have assisted me with this project and I would like to sincerely thank all of them: Len Platt, David Walsh, Chrissie Tiller, Tobias Becker and all my colleagues at Goldsmiths, Northumbria and Kingston Universities. My former mentors from the Goldsmiths Caribbean studies course and part-time degree programme, Professor Joan Anim-Addo, Dr Petronella Breinburg, Mary Boley, James Souter and Martin Williams. Also my fellow comrades Mark Norfolk, Aamar Butt, Sean Brennan and Riley Stuart and all those performers who have given me their time, advice and encouragement. My thanks go to my inspirational big sisters, Misdel and Audrey and all my wise brothers, Claude, Keith, George, Bill and Andrew. Finally, Angela, Joe and Caleb, who have supported me throughout, and without whom I could not have completed this project. This thesis is dedicated to Edna, Esme and Handel Linton. 3 Abstract This thesis is primarily concerned with how London West End revue engaged in the construction and representation of national and racial identities. The central research question is: what do these representations of national and racial identities in West End revue tell us about wider British culture and society in this period? In answering this question, I explore and develop a number of understandings of how national and racial identity operated in mainstream popular culture. How important was the influence of national and racial politics to revue’s success? Why was identity so compelling a theme in these shows? How did other dimensions of difference, such as gender, sexuality and class, interact within these representations of race and nation? What does revue tell us about the changing state and status of Britain under the influence of new technologies, migration and early globalisation? How does this particular focus on national and racial identities change or challenge our wider understanding of revue and its significance in British culture across this period? My thesis proposes that London West End revue was a topical, satirical popular theatre that engaged in national identity discourse and reconstituted identity formations through music, dance and wordplay. Through contextual and textual analysis, I highlight the attitudes, assumptions and beliefs that informed revue performance and narratives and reflected provocative new lifestyles, values and politics. Often politically conservative, protective of the status quo and concerned with appealing to a mainstream audience, revue was highly sensitive to the status and position of both Britain and London and cultivated a sense of itself as the defender of a colonial empire and, at the same time, the centre of a cosmopolitan culture that competed with other metropolitan centres such as Paris, Berlin and New York. 4 Contents Declaration .................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1: Histories, Practices and Methodologies: Contexts for Reading London West End Revue. .......................................................................................................................... 19 Literature review ..................................................................................................... 34 Taxonomy of form .................................................................................................. 48 Narratives of nation ................................................................................................. 54 The emergence of London West End revue ............................................................ 58 Chapter 2: Revue in the Modern World: Possibilities and Perils -West End Identities ......... 65 The modern scenographic aesthetic of revue – Fragmentation as modernity ......... 74 A gallery of modern fashions, music and dance ..................................................... 84 Chapter 3: New Insecurities, New Form, New Identity- National Identity and Raciologies in Eightpence a Mile (1913) ............................................................................................ 93 Chapter 4: Degeneration/Regeneration – The Remaking of Nation in Wartime West End Spectacular Revue. ................................................................................................... 124 Nationalism in West End revue: ‘denigrate the enemy’, celebrate the nation ...... 129 Women objectified ............................................................................................... 140 From suffrage to public shaming: Are you doing your duty? ............................... 142 Death rather than dishonour .................................................................................. 144 Chapter 5: American Ascendancy and Black Cultural Transfer in Dover Street to Dixie ... 156 Revitalisation or decline? ...................................................................................... 163 Hullo London! Hullo New York! .......................................................................... 174 America mediated ................................................................................................. 176 Cultural transfer and containment ......................................................................... 180 Border crossings and resistance ............................................................................ 184 5 Black performance ................................................................................................ 189 Resistance .............................................................................................................. 191 America and Britain .............................................................................................. 193 Chapter 6: Class Distinction and National Identity in 1920s West End Intimate Revue ..... 195 The Co-Optimists – revue and nation .................................................................... 199 ‘Herds’, ‘crowds’ and the erosion of distinction ................................................... 210 Afterword .................................................................................................................. 231 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 237 6 Introduction In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the most successful form of theatrical entertainment in London was musical comedy. A plethora of popular shows such as The Geisha (1896), Floradora (1900), A Country Girl (1904), The Merry Widow (1907), The Arcadians (1909) and Our Miss Gibbs (1910) placed musical comedy at the forefront of a vibrant and fashionable popular culture, and established the ‘West End’ of London as ‘a modern retail and pleasure Mecca’.1 Musical comedy emerged at the height of Britain’s imperial supremacy, with the country benefiting from the peace, prosperity and wealth brought about by its unrivalled Empire and by the industrial revolution. Musical comedies articulated an idealised sense of society,2 creating a world that was supremely confident in itself and in which conflicts or challenges to the status quo could be safely negotiated and assimilated, and order maintained. A key theme often cultivated in musical comedy narratives was the smooth integration of old conservative aristocratic sensibilities and the new liberal modernity of the metropolis, as illustrated by George Edwardes’ production of A Gaiety Girl (1909). The plot of A Gaiety Girl concerns a group of aristocratic ladies whose ambitions of capturing the interest of military gentlemen are threatened by the entrance of a rival group of young actresses from the Gaiety Theatre. As the story progresses, these vivacious, assertive West End chorus girls become emblematic of a modern world that threatens to encroach on the established order of things. However, 1 Len Platt, Musical Comedy on the West End Stage, 1890-1939 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 26. 2 See David Walsh and Len Platt, Musical Theater and American Culture (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2003) and John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (Waltham, Brandeis University Press, 2003). 7 in the end, true to the narrative form of musical comedy, this modernity is made safe: the ‘chorus girls’ and their perceived challenge are assimilated by marriage. During the Edwardian period, London West End revue began to supplant musical comedy as the most popular theatrical entertainment. Although revue had much in common with musical comedy, it began to reconstitute a different world on its stages, one that at many levels rejected the world constructed by musical comedy and poked fun at its whimsical plots.