George Alexander and the Work of the Actor-Manager

Lucie Sutherland

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030409340
• eBook ISBN: 9783030409357
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Entertainment Industry

In the first book-length study of the work and legacy of West End actor-manager George Alexander since the 1930s, George Alexander and the Work of the Actor Manager examines the key part this figure played in presenting new drama by authors including Oscar Wilde and Henry James. The book sheds new light on the figure of the actor-manager, assessing in detail the influence of Alexander within and beyond his time.
At the St. James's Theatre in London between 1891 and 1918, through a range of strategies including the support of new writers, and adaptation of fiction to the stage, Alexander sustained professional status through practices that continue to be reflected in the cultural industries today. A range of evidence is employed including production reviews, anecdotal accounts, financial records, and personal correspondence, to reveal how he operated as a business entrepreneur as well as an artistic innovator.

© The Author(s) 2020

L. SutherlandGeorge Alexander and the Work of the Actor-ManagerPalgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40935-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Lucie Sutherland¹

(1)

University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Lucie Sutherland

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Actor-managerAnecdoteDavid GarrickTreasury BookW. Macqueen-PopeWest End

End Abstract

A St. James’s Theatre opened in 2012; the first newly constructed theatre in central London for more than thirty years, the building was funded entirely by private investment. With both a main house and a studio space, as well as a preference for new work or short-running revivals, the theatre aimed to set itself apart from the long-running and spectacular repertoire most often found within the West End. This St. James’s was overwritten in 2017 when the venue was acquired by the Really Useful Group and renamed The Other Palace, providing an arena for the entertainment corporation and its figurehead, Andrew Lloyd Webber, to trial new material. Although the space is situated beyond the arena marked out on Westminster City Council street signs as ‘Theatreland’, this is now one of many sites contributing to the West End, an urban environment associated with fashionable and commercially viable entertainment, which, although never precisely defined as a location , is commonly understood to be a district bounded by the Strand, Kingsway, Oxford Street and New Bond Street.¹

Private investment and rapid assimilation as a West End venue echoes the trajectory of an earlier St. James’s Theatre that existed from 1835 until 1957 on King Street to the south of Piccadilly Circus. That new theatre was financed by tenor John Braham, who in 1835 secured a licence for a venue promising musical entertainment, but resistance to a permanent theatre space on King Street—barely within the West End arena described earlier, but on the border of the prestigious Mayfair—was pronounced. Petitions were sent to the Lord Chamberlain from local residents and, significantly, from managers at the nearby Haymarket, and the older London patent theatres of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. That resistance signalled that the St. James’s was a competitor and also a disruptive presence, bringing a cross-class pleasure-seeking audience into proximity with the residents of Mayfair. Unease was subsumed over time though, as the St. James’s was rapidly accommodated within a growing body of venues offering theatrical entertainment.

An equal proximity to both the West End and to Mayfair provided the potential for exclusivity to become a defining marker of the theatre, for example during the tenure of impresario John Mitchell, from 1842 until 1854, when it frequently housed French theatre or opera companies and leading performers from Paris, including Rachel and Regnier. However, the actor-manager who held the lease to the venue for the longest period of time also consolidated the exclusive St. James’s brand in the most extreme and explicit fashion. George Alexander leased the theatre from 1891 until his death in 1918; he produced a repertoire of new English drama aimed at sustaining and promoting management, work that was at home on the borders of Mayfair, abiding by the strictures of the censor. During this time fourteen new theatres were licensed by the Lord Chamberlain and built within the West End.² As the number of competing venues rose, managers including Alexander had to revise their commercial practices and capitalise upon their specific appeal; their theatres effectively became brands encouraging audience, or customer, loyalty. George Alexander and the Work of the Actor-Manager will establish how he worked at the St. James’s to both survive within and to mould the West End theatre industry , influencing this prominent entertainment district beyond the end of his career and lifetime.

When that St. James’s Theatre was demolished in 1957, Laurence Olivier, who with Vivien Leigh campaigned to save the building, continued to link the venue to Alexander and his work; Olivier noted that in the theatre he was ‘struck by a feeling, most likely bred and inculcated by Sir George Alexander—the renowned actor-manager who brought fame to the St. James’s—that this was a theatre for gentle folk’.³ Even during the post-war development of Mayfair and the West End, the residual traces of a theatre maker who came to prominence at the end of the nineteenth century continued to haunt repertoire, with references by eminent actors and the influence of Alexander upon the work of prominent twentieth-century theatre makers like Nigel Playfair and May Whitty—who worked within the St. James’s company—extending his influence and continuing to shape mainstream theatre. This is one example of ‘ghosting’ as defined by Marvin Carlson, of ‘something coming back in the theatre, and so the relationships between theatre and cultural memory are deep and complex’.⁴ Alexander was one of the final generation of actor-managers—whose origins lay in the newly commercial early modern stage which premiered work by Shakespeare, Marlowe and their contemporaries—and ‘something coming back’ is an apt definition. As commercial production companies came to dominate West End theatre in the early decades of the twentieth century, there was no direct continuation of practice, but the frequent re-emergence of characteristics found within the actor-manager system. So, for example, prominent actors including Olivier and Kenneth Branagh have taken up residency in West End theatres for a significant period of time, presenting work in which they have starred, playing on an assumed ‘cultural memory’ of the actor-manager tradition on the part of West End audiences. Within the subsidised sector, the coordination of repertoire and funding by an artistic director is also comparable to some of the work undertaken by the actor-manager.

Defining the Actor-manager

The actor-manager figure developed from the practice, in the early modern period, of actors leasing or building sites for performance, a notable example being the Burbage brothers, both actors, and major shareholders in the Globe Theatre from 1599, with Richard Burbage as the prominent actor and manager at this venue where many Shakespeare plays premiered. The role was recuperated in the Restoration period, when under the patent system—in theatres licensed to stage spoken drama—it was common practice to combine a primary creative role at a venue with management of that venue. Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, the two men given a royal patent to present public theatre performances after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, were dramatists, but actors took on a managerial role with increasing frequency throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The tenure of David Garrick as actor and manager at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane from 1747 until 1776 was a key marker in his work to consolidate theatre as reputable environment and profession.⁵ The esteem afforded to this industry professional was endorsed through the establishment of the Garrick Club in 1831, a forum that worked to consolidate acting as a respected line of work, providing a space where ‘actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms’.⁶ Acceptance into this Club was a marker of prestige, and Alexander was admitted on 2 January 1886, proposed by John Hare, and seconded by Henry Irving. The model demonstrated by Garrick, conjoining prominence as an actor not only with management, but with management of a single London venue over a long period of time, became the ideal for industry leaders. While reflected in regional and touring theatre, here the focus remains with a prominent actor-manager within the West End, as the hub for the English theatre industry since the origins of the actor-manager system.

Funding of managerial enterprises often occurred through discreet networks of fraternal investment and support, facilitated by institutions like the Garrick Club, which explains, to a significant extent, the difficulty experienced by women in entering management. While there are some notable examples of actress-managers in London theatre during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Eliza Vestris at the Olympic (1830), Marie Wilton at the Prince of Wales (1865), and Lena Ashwell at the Savoy (1906) and then the Kingsway (1907), actor-managers dominated in the West End sphere. Alexander is a representative of the last generation of this type of actor-manager, and a representative who first staged what is now the most frequently revived play of that era, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The first decade of the twentieth century saw the dissolution of the actor-manager system, but the term continued to be employed; for example, Olivier himself was often referred to as actor-manager during his time as director of Chichester Festival Theatre (1962–1965), and as first artistic directed for the National Theatre (1962–1973). However, while the phenomenon of a renowned figurehead at a venue survives, the actor-manager system did not progress beyond the first decades of the twentieth century. Looking at the tributes paid to the final generation of this older actor-manager type, it is apparent that altering production practices and an acute rise in the expense of leasing London venues prohibited their kind of work. So much so, that the obituary for Arthur Bourchier in 1927 actually began with reference to his exceptional position in London theatre by that time:

The death of Mr. Arthur Bourchier, which we record on another page, removes from the stage one of the last of the old school of actor-managers. He was proud to claim that he was the only London actor-manager having his own theatre (The Strand) and working without a syndicate or a financial partner.⁷

The Example of George Alexander

The following study of Alexander therefore aims to examine key p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. George Alexander and the St. James’s ‘Brand’
• 3. The Actor-Manager System: Autonomy and Collaboration
• 4. The Actor-Manager System: The Role of the Playwright
• 5. Managing Risk: Cross-sector Adaptation
• 6. The Legacy of Alexander at the St. James’s Theatre
• Back Matter