“Sir, I thought it had been better.”

Sam Johnson’s characteristically honest reason for leaving the room when someone started reading his only play, Irene, at a country house party in 1780.

Today playwrights around the world can take comfort that their fabulous, darling manuscript, perfect in every respect in their own eyes, might not be the collossus they thought it was but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will not turn out to be an incredible writer. Perhaps all they need to do is switch genre…

If you’d nipped backstage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on the 6th February 1749, you might well have witnessed an aspiring playwright pacing backstage, nervously chewing his fingernails as he contemplated what the actors might do with his baby.

He didn’t have much of an opinion of their ability to do it justice. “Players, Sir? I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.”

Given that Irene was a tragedy, and a big old heavy tragedy at that – one that would have gone down an absolute storm with Shakespeare’s crowd, who loved blood and guts – the idea of ‘dancing dogs’ poking fun at his work, Johnson probably had a point. He was particularly bothered about his leading lady, Hannah Pritchard, who he described as ‘a vulgar idiot.’

Of course, he might have disliked the concept of actors, but that didn’t stop him being mates with them – one of his good friends was David Garrick, whom he’d taught and who now was taking quite a risk in putting on Johnson’s play – it had already been rejected by its 18th Century equivalent of beta-readers. Garrick had insisted on a few changes that would appeal to the lighter moods of modern theatre, that Johnson didn’t approve of, but had to suck up if he wanted his show to see the light of day.

I find myself wondering whether Johnson, as he stood in the wings, awkwardly trussed up in scarlet waistcoat, gold lace and and fancy hat specially acquired for his first night as a luvvie, was rather wishing he was still in Greenwich Park, looking out over the river, sucking the end of his quill, trying to find the exact right words for the big death scene at the end. Whether he rather longed for that special time when the work is in progress, when everything can be changed and all will be fabulous.

We’re not really sure where Johnson lived while he stayed at Greenwich. He says it was at the Golden Hart in Church Street. Julian Watson suggests it could have been in the delightful weatherboarded row on the front cover of his (excellent) book (available at the Visitor Centre, last time I looked)

These houses are long-gone, not least because of the remodelling of Garden Stairs when the foot tunnel was built, but I’m guessing they’d have been approximately opposite the Cutty Sark.

If only his play had been any good. I recently went to a lecture at Johnson’s House where they were re evaluating the work, but although they come to the conclusion that it was not the utter flop History tells us it is, even the ex-curator (whose name escapes me and which I can’t look up because they annoyingly keep their website up to date…) had to admit it wasn’t a play she either recommended reading or ever putting on again.

It just wasn’t what the modern play-going public wanted. Johnson’s prose was dated, his plot clunky and his action heavy. But the thing the audiences hated most was the very thing that 150 years ago they’d have actually queued up for.

Johnson had poor Mrs Pritchard ‘strangled’ on stage, in front of the audience. Instead of lapping up the violence, though, they started hissing whistling and making cat calls that went on so long that in subsequent performances she had to exit and be murdered offstage.

Thing is, the play didn’t do as badly as many modern scholars think it did. True, it only ran for 9 performances between 6th and 20th Feb (there weren’t any shows on Wednesdays, Fridays or Sundays) but that was about average for new plays in those days. There actually weren’t many new plays as everything had to be read and passed by the Lord Chamberlain, so most shows were old classics that actors played in repertory, with the odd modern play squeezed in.

And Johnson made money. The whole idea of putting on plays in those days was to attempt to put them on in batches of three. The first two nights the profits went to the promoter; if the show lasted to a third night it became a benefit performance to pay the author, and after that every third night was the author’s night – another reason to put on plays by dead playwrights.  Johnson made £236 after the house fee, which was pretty decent cash.

Nevertheless, Garrick still needed to tweak the show in order to keep the audiences coming, not least so his mate Sam could make a few more quid. Johnson’s tragedy lasted to the sixth night before Garrick slipped in a nice cheery farce at the end and there is mention of a ‘Scotch Dance’ that would have also been a splendid crowd-pleaser to get people to come so Johnson’s play limped to its ninth performance.

Nowadays Irene is often described as ‘a poem’ and it’s quite hard to come by. It’s not a classic (though some (who haven’t read it; I confess I haven’t either, so I rely on the ex-curator’s opinion) assume it must be because Johnson wrote it, but neither was it the total turkey that other scholars have claimed. And hell, it if is a total turkey, it’s our total turkey.

Blimey – if this comes about Galleon Theatre will have fallen on their feet and no mistake. If you recall, they were booted out of their old home, the Playhouse, last spring by a landlord who told the newspapers he was going to put on shows himself then, as everyone had suspected, just filled it full of bunk beds to cash in on the Olympics.

Well,  the pic at the top of this post is the plan for a new, purpose-built, 110-seater studio theatre in Greenwich. Apparently there are already ‘advanced discussions with a nationwide builder’ going on, as part of a Section 106 agreement.

The Gallion guys don’t say where it’s going to be though they do say “within a few minutes walking distance on Greenwich High Road”, so I’m assuming it will be up the other end, nearer Deptford Bridge DLR, where all the demolition’s going on just now.

I’m told they need two things for this to happen – for Greenwich Council to approve this as a suitable 106 project, and to raise about £250,000 towards the cost (though I thought that was what 106s were all about…) Nick Raynsford (who, as we all know, is Mr Building Trade) thinks it’s doable through one-off capital cost applications. I’m not entirely sure what that is – I’m guessing it’s those things the government tried to tax a couple of months ago and had to U-turn on.

The details are sketchy at the moment – but if it comes off, I think this sounds exciting (and if it’s purpose-built it will be hard to turn into dormitories later…)

I don’t know – first a recital hall in Vanbrugh Hill, now a studio theatre – whatever next – an opera house in Millennium Village? A corps de ballet in Traf Road? Un salon de philosophie at Phantom Towers?

PS. If you lodged a complaint about Beds & Bars turning the Playhouse into a dormitory and your name isn’t here please let Galleon know: alice@galleontheatre.co.uk

At Greenwich lies the Scene, where many a Lass

Has been Green-gown’d upon the tender Grass

If Flamstead’s Stars would make a true Report

Our City’s Breeds much mended by the Court 

& etc.

Back in 1959, while he was still waiting to come up with Oliver! Lionel Bart wrote a musical that is very rarely performed these days. Lock Up Your Daughters! is a parody of Restoration comedy. Ludicrous plotline? Check. Over the top characters whose names give away their roles, such as the romantic Captain Constant or the lascivious Mrs Squeezum? Check. Saucy one-liners and single entendres? Check.

It also had a couple of cracking songs. I particularly remember the splendid – and limpidly insipid - Lovely Lover, the outrageously unsubtle When Does the Ravishing Begin? and the sultry Gentle Art of Seduction, which, if memory serves, bore a remarkable musical similarity to and was probably recycled later as You Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.

But Bart’s piss-take was nothing on the real thing, which, by the time I’m talking about, had already become a parody of itself.

If someone had asked me to write a pastiche of a jaunty Restoration comedy, I don’t think I could have come up with anything as stereotyped, hackneyed or downright fatuous as William Mountfort’s Greenwich Park. When I first heard about it, my ears pricked as a possible suggestion for a revival at Greenwich Theatre. Having read the thing, I’m much less certain, but it’s certainly fun – and pretty rowdy stuff. And let’s face it – that was what 17th century comedy was all about.

It clearly demonstrates what the general population of Britain thought of Greenwich at the time (btw ‘green-gowning, if you hadn’t worked it out already, refers to the side-effects of outdoor ‘entertainment’, something one could – in the popular imagination, at least – get plenty of in Greenwich Park…) See Greenwich Bird for further proof of what people thought of the town…

Let’s take a look at the Dramatis Personae:

Men

Sir Thomas Reveller, an old wicked lewd knight.

Mr Raison, a Grocer

Mr Sassafras, a Drugster, both jolly citizens and companions with Sir Thos.

Lt. Worthy, a Young Nobleman, newly returned from Travel

Young Reveller*, Son to Sir Thomas,  a wild young fellow, kept by Mrs Raison and Courts Florella for a wife

Sir William Thoughtless, a foolish knight

A Beaux

Bully Bounce

Women

Dorinda, a private Mistress, kept by Lord Worthy and in Love with Young Reveller

Florella,

Violante, daughters to my Lady Hazard. Florella in love with Young Reveller. Violante in love with the Lt. Worthy.

Mrs Raison, in love with Y. Reveller

Lady Hazard, Aunt to Dorinda.

Constable, Watch, Masqueraders &etc. 

*If you’re thinking that perhaps this ‘Young Reveller’ character was rather popular with the ladies, I should perhaps say that, to save arguments, the role was taken by Mr Moutjoy himself.

All clear? Subtle it ain’t, but it was always meant to be comedy; always supposed to be knockabout, so fair enough.

It took me ages to track down a copy online, but I finally did, and present you the link here but in case you value your time, here’s what I made of it:

The first scene does, admittedly, crackle with good lines . It takes place in a Greenwich Grocer’s shop and consists of the chap’s wife trying to persuade her husband to buy her a carriage, promising not to be extravagant any more if only he gives into this one teeny request. When he refuses she rails against him with a fantastic exit speech:

Well, think on it, Bungler. I long for a Coach, and I will have a Coach, and you may spare it out of Clarret, you Sot, since you can’t get no children to inherit what you have, I’ll spend it and thou shalt never live an easy hour ’til I have a Coach and so Think on’t thou Associate of Drunkards, eternal Tobacco Funker; must I be contented with a Beast that stinks perpetually, sits up till two or three a-Clock in the Morning and knows nothing but his Bottle sometimes a week together? The World shall know what a Bedfellow thou art, that Snores all Night and art Sick in the Morning; thou debilitated Booby, thou Sapless Trunk.  (exit).

Blimey.

It’s a bit of a relief when the scene shifts to Tower Hill and Lt. Worthy, who having just returned from abroad, is thinking of rustling up a few mates and going to Greenwich, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Meanwhile Sir Thomas Reveller has a hangover:

I must leave off this Drinking, it will kill me else; for the Heat of my Body’s so violent it will set the Clarret within me a boiling and will make a hash of my bowels for Satan; yet I look pretty for my age; too. What a Pox, but I’m eight and forty and have lungs as shrill as a Eunuch, fa, la, la, la.

He’s fed up with his son George, (the Reveller, if you recall, played by Mr Moutjoy) for not letting him in on the female action:

“but what a cursed Rogue as keeps all his Whores to himself, he won’t let his none Dad come in for a Snack; I’m forced to lay on my own Maids.”

And so on. Thing is, it’s all roaring stuff, but after several pages of it, it starts to get a bit wearisome. I’d like a bit of actual plot to turn up. As it is, it plods on, slowly, slowly,  eventually unfolding a basic caper story that must have been pretty hackneyed even then, full of double and single entendres which must have been side-splitting in the 1670s but actually rather tedious after a while for me, at least  as is the interchangeability of the words ‘whore’ and ‘woman’ (and I speak as someone who actually seeks out Restoration Comedy when it’s on – I particularly enjoyed the Nash’s She Stoops to Conquer recently). Mountfort was writing at the fag end of the genre, and it feels like it.

I found my eyes glazing over after about four scenes, though every so often there was an entertaining turn of phrase; I particularly liked the answer to the question (of Greenwich Park) ‘what do we do here?’

‘Let’s have some Wine and Cold Chicken, go upon Flamstead’s leads and huzza to the Neighbouring Counties!

I love the idea of a load of mattressed 17th Century toffs climbing on the poor astronomer’s roof and shouting at Kent in the middle of the night. No wonder he was always in a bad mood if that’s what went on all the time…

I was also curious about the scene that takes place in a garden in Debtford-Wells – I don’t recall any wells round there, though naturally I’m no Deptford expert – puts me in mind a little of Peckham Spring…

Ultimately, this is an interesting curiosity, but not something I suspect ever needs to see the light of day again, though you never know, Greenwich Theatre might like (one hell of) a challenge. If they do, frankly, I’d suggest a revival of Lock Up Your Daughters, even if only for a reprise of the rabble-rousing When Does the Ravishing Begin?

1779

In this Age of Learning, when the Works of the Ingenious are perpetually Collected and sought after by most Curious Persons, we doubt not but the Dramatick Writings of the Famous Mr M——–, will be acceptable to all Encouragers of these Entertainments.

The PLAYS of this Gentleman have most of them pass’d the Test of the Politest Audiences with Applause, and been favourably receiv’d by the greatest Judges of Wit: The Criticks may find Fault with Some Things, but upon the whole, the Impatrial Reader will have a Pleasure, not generally to be met with in Plays that have appear’d Since the Time he wrote…

… King Edward the Third and Henry the Second, which tho’ not wholly composed by him, it is presum’d he had, at least, a Share in fitting them for the Stage, other since it cannot be supposed he would have taken the Liberty of Writing Dedications to them; which we hope is sufficient Authority for this Freedomn, not withstanding* one of them was aftearwards own’d by another Author.

* Henry II by Mr Bancroft.

The Phantom Translation:

The Booksellers to the Sucker

“After the success of a couple of not very good but extremely saucy plays by famous people, every Tom Dick and Harry is buying any old crap publishers care to package up and flog. We reckon we can get away with cobbling together a bunch of the barely-heard-of Mr M’s scribblings and no one will realise it’s rubbish until they’ve all bought it.

One or two of his works weren’t booed off the stage, and even though the critics hated him, the plebs all laughed at the rude bits so up yours. He’ll just about pass muster for the undiscerning, who won’t care a fig if nobody’s bothered to put the shows on since he wrote them fifty-odd years ago…

…Okay, we admit that he might have plagiarised a couple of them, but surely he must have at least shifted scenery or held a spear or something or he wouldn’t have scrawled his name on them and slipped them into the bunch of papers he sold us one night when we’d had a few too many at the tavern, so we take no responsiblity for them whatsoever. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bancroft, you’ll not get a penny out of us.”

This -well, the top bit at least –  is the real preface, word-for-word of a collection of plays that I’ll be talking about tomorrow – I just couldn’t let it go without comment – it’s just so, well, frank about its motives, and also, somehow, so modern. I’ve wanted to talk about this for ages, but it’s taken me a long while to track it down. More tomorrow…

You know this time of year always puts me in mind of Bubble Theatre – a company I have followed since the late eighties when they had their own bubble-shaped tent and whose summer promenade productions around the parks of London were a fixture the Phantom Calendar for a good decade – probably longer.

When they first started arts funding wasn’t the shambles it is now and Bubble’s itinerary took them all over the capital from Chiswick Park in the west to Valentines Park in the east, Waterlow Park in the north to Sydenham Park in the south  (and me with them – I used to pick a different place every year and a bunch of us used to travel miles for the experience of seeing a new show in a different venue) but as sundry cuts bit, the Rotherhithe-based company was forced to shrink its reach, though it stayed in South East London to the last – our own Oxleas Wood was one of the last places to go.

I was one of the angry ones when the Arts Council slashed Bubble’s funding. I guess they were just too popular, not wanky and progressive enough for the snobs who want to see ‘innovation’ (read ‘weird stuff by arts graduates. Weird stuff by anyone else not allowed’). I was so very angry because far from being uninnovative, Bubble are one of the bravest companies around – they are masters of reinvention, unafraid to experiment with style and working with the community – something once fashionable but now rather shunned. Yeah, we get art ‘for’ the people but more and more rarely ‘by’ the people (with the honourable exception of Sir Danny Boyle last Friday night).

I can’t say I love everything they do (Not even Sir Danny had that accolade – I mean what was it with that creepy baby? It  looked like something out of Alien…) Occasionally it does come out just a bit too weird for me – or is more fun for the participants than it is for the spectator. Sometimes the intention is there but the execution hits wide of the mark. But that was what was/is exciting about Bubble. Did they say, for example, when The Sirens of Titan was chosen as the summer show ‘come off, it, that novel is un-performable’? No – they went ahead anyway, and much of it was extraordinary. Bizarre, yes, but extraordinary.

You just don’t know what you’re going to get – and when you get a good one (which is usually) it is utterly sublime – an evening of pure joy, energy and dazzling invention (the pictures are from one of my all-time favourites, The Odyssey, but there have been so many.) And that was enough to get me back every year.

They lost their Arts Council Grant several years ago, but reinvented themselves yet again with what’s now known as crowd funding – they called it Fan Made Theatre. But then everything went a bit quiet  for me.

I traditionally found Bubble’s website hard to work out where I wanted to be on it, and if it had the info I needed, I could never find it  so I thought I’d drop Peth, artistic director for the past – what – twenty years? – a line to ask what’s going on with the company.

His reply was very encouraging – they’re still doing exciting stuff – and still working with all sorts of interesting people in loads of interesting ways. Here’s his reply (with my comments interspersed – hey – my blog, my rules…)

It’s been an interesting few years, replacing 65% of your core revenue income isn’t easy, but we’re getting there. From a financial point of view we are no longer dependent on the vagaries of the Arts Council and are working in partnership with a number of trusts and foundations – 3 of which have awarded us 3 year funding.

I can only think that it’s good to be independent of the Arts Council – it’s unlikely that we’ll get another Olympic Games turning up and suddenly pulling the rug from arts funding to pay for it, but I am curious to see whether that funding will be reinstated in 2013 or just quietly forgotten – and by that I mean arts funding for anyone, let alone people like Bubble, who don’t dance to the Arts Council’s tune anyway.

We work quite intensively in Southwark and Lewisham, running year long projects in schools for children referred to our Speech Bubbles programme with communication needs – this programme is now rolling out to North London and Manchester. Our LB Plus project trains teenagers who are not in education, employment or training (NEET is the awful term) to lead workshops and deliver inter-active performances to other teenagers. This is now making links with businesses – mainly in the Shard area, delivering training for employees and LB Plus recently won the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) award for innovation in youth work.

And another award from United for all Ages was won for our intergenerational project Grandchildren of the Blitz, which built a show from interviews conducted by children with elders who had been children themselves during the war. Out of it came Blackbirds a beautiful intergenerational show which we took to the Albany as well as the new Canada Water library and a couple of other Southwark venues.

We’re now running 8 participatory groups – for adults, teens and children and run workshops in two residential homes. It’s all very busy – 900 events last year and each week the company makes theatre with a population equivalent to a primary school.

While money is very tight the last piece of good news is that we have raised the £280,000 needed to make our building (2 old sacking warehouses in Rotherhithe) fully accessible, in order to function as a “creative hub” – used by other companies as well as Bubble.

Congratulations, guys.

This is all very well I can hear the Phantom thinking, but when are we going to see you in Oxleas Woods again?

Ha – you read my mind.

Well I’ve written into our Business Plan the aspiration to bring back the summer show for 2015 – quite possibly people who once brought their children will then be being bringing their grandchildren, but that would be a lovely thing.

Fantastic news. I’m there.

But before then we can be seen in another park – the regenerated Ladywell Fields, when on the 16th September we will be producing an event called Rivers and People. Starting about 7pm and running through to 9pm, it includes formation dog walking, a cycling barn owl and excerpts from our last big piece The Great Outdoors (check out the website for footage).

Okay – count me in. Aw, c’mon folks – Ladywell Fields isn’t that far… And Formation Dog-Walking. That’s like the canine equivalent of Rhythmic Gymnastics. And that’s Bubble for you…

Lastly, It’s our 40th birthday.

Blimey – I had no idea – I thought they started in the 80s.

We’re holding a series of events to mark the occasion and learn more about our history. The next is on the evening of the 29th September, 3 of my predecessors will be talking about the 80′s and the perils that befell the company during that heady era. Do come along, do encourage others to do likewise.

Then the other event that might be of interest is one that will mark the 90′s – a rehearsed reading of one of the pantos. This will take place on Sunday 6th January – and the exact script will be chosen by public vote.

Well, my vote is for Cinderella, merely for the inspired choice of characters. I mean – who else would dare start a panto with a death scene (Cinders’ mother) and have the dame go off to the bar, only to be physically dragged out of it when our heroine needs a fairy godmother, just in time for the slop scene? Brilliant – and not something I’ve ever seen done before or since.

Of course my choice is only Cinders because I wasn’t around the year my gang went to see – actually, I still don’t know what the show was because all they ever talk about is meerkats. If there’s no reprise of the Meerkat Song, there will be a lot of startled heads popping up.

It will feature Simon and Eric and others from our panto ensemble, and will include a ceremonial re-enactment of one of the slop scenes. Perfect for that dark and dead time just after crimble. 

Cinderella it is then.

If you have a moment please consider becoming a member of the company – more and more the Bubble is becoming a shareholding type organisation. That way we widen our support and you get regular information and invites. And exhort your friends to help us build the company back up.

I point you all towards our snazzy but not yet fully completed new website at www.londonbubble.org.uk for more details, and to enjoy the partial but already interesting Bubblepedia.

Delighted to say that the new site is much, much easier to navigate, though I still can’t find out how to book for things and it’s quite hard to find out how to join as a member if you don’t know that they’re called MoBs.

Seriously folks – if you’ve not come across this company before, it’s fantastic – and if you, like me, remember happy evenings in torrential rain (or the odd balmy heat) following strangely-attired people through woods to find a magical world that only Bubble could create, do get involved.

We heard much about the demise of Greenwich Playhouse over the past few months. Apparently Galleon Theatre are looking at the stables at Charlton House as a new home, which could be an interesting proposition (though less convenient for people coming from London – it’s close to Charlton station but we all know what people who don’t come to South East London are like when it comes to not wanting to venture into places they’ve not heard of…)

Which means that now, there is a space free. And, as you can see, it’s very free. All mention of Greenwich Playhouse has been painted out, the posters are gone, there’s nothing to say there was ever a theatre there.

The reason I didn’t go absolutely ballistic over the ending of the lease with Galleon was this article in The Wharf where the landlord of Beds and Bars who own the building says that they are not looking to pack the place full of extra bunks to cash in on the Olympics. In the words of Edmund Passey, Group Operations Director:

“We’re looking at what we can do with it and have made no application to change the space.

“The only difference is we’re now the landowners of the site and we’re not looking to have one theatre company running it.”

I took that as being a multi-theatre company venture, perhaps a theatre space for hire, like so many of the fringe theatres in the centre of London.

So, Edmund Passey, when are we going to see this happen, then? Certainly the first phase, that of obliterating the former occupants of the theatre, seems complete (albeit harsh, they are as much a part of the place’s history as any other). The next few months will show the real colours of Beds and Bars but I have faith.

I look forward to sitting in the front (read ‘only’) row of the next production at the space formerly known as the Greenwich Playhouse as a lovely diversion for all the occupants of other hotels during the Olympics.

Yup folks, I’m still enjoying the Greenwich Theatre Book – an incredibly slim volume that punches above its weight and provides a really excellent base for further digging. It’s made all the more mysterious by the fact that I can hardly open the thing for fear of it falling apart (it’s not mine or I would be far less careful…), so I can only dip in occasionally.

Today’s post isn’t really about Greenwich Theatre – or not the building, at least. But a brief mention in the book made me look again at another Greenwich venue. Over the years there have been a fair few places of entertainment, ranging from the highbrow (not many of them, ‘fraid) to the rather less salubrious establishments (plenty to see there…) From trestle-stages to purpose-built palaces, serious legit-stuff to – well, a few things the Lord Chamberlain would have got a bit hot under the ermine collar about. But by far the most popular of all were the music halls of Victorian Greenwich.

I’ll come to a big one that only died about forty years ago another day, because today, I want to concentrate on one that survives – in fact I understand it’s the oldest surviving purpose-built music hall there is – though it’s a mere shadow of its former self.

Where is it? Well – it’s here:

Still can’t see it? Look up – at the rooms spanning the bridge between the Admiral Hardy and – well, the other side. The Clarence Music Hall was incorporated into the original design of Greenwich Market by Joseph Kay when Greenwich was being gentrified in the 1830s, presumably as a sop to the working classes whose houses were being bulldozed to make way for it.

Admittedly the market had got a bit out of hand, with pushcarts and market stalls all over the place – up alleyways, blocking roads, stuffing every courtyard with stinking vegetables, animals being slaughtered any-old-where and generally annoying the toffs.

Joseph Kay was put in charge of making the new market pretty – and, from what’s left of it, he did a good job. There was a designated slaughterhouse area, room for stables for the stallholders’ horses and, of course a good, large central bit for the stalls themsleves.

The Admiral Hardy was one of the first pubs up and running in the complex and they decided to use the upstairs room spanning the market’s trendy new entrance as a music hall. The Royal Clarence Theatre opened in 1839. I’m assuming it was named for William IV (the erstwhile Duke of Clarence) who was popular in Greenwich, ostensibly because of his life as a sailor before becoming king, but probably as much, if not more so, because of his saucy former life and his openly living with a mistress. Greenwich has always liked characters.

The entrance was at Number 7a and you had to climb the stairs to get to it, adding to the back-room salaciousness of it all. If it had started out as trying to be a legitimate theatre (which I can’t see that it ever did) it definitely wasn’t after 1845, when it gave up even trying to sound posh and just called itself the Clarence Music Hall.

It was run by the Mitchell family, who also owned the pub, until 1860, but it carried on after they gave it up, until it was forcibly closed by the authorities for being too popular. It used to cram 250 people in to a 46ft x 24ft room and even the Victorians, not known for being particularly obsessed with safety, thought that might be a few too many.

However the room still existed, and continues to exist, despite two remodellings of the market – 1908 and 1958.

Each time, whatever happened to the inside of the market, Joseph Kay’s exterior stayed, and, thanks to its being part of the very fabric of the outside, the music hall has stayed too, an airy, high-roofed affair with windows both sides, onto the street and the market below. Its raison d’etre now gone, it became a bit of everything, as such places tend to be, including an engineering workshop. In 1964 it was converted to a TV/Film studio. I don’t know for whom. It’s far too early for Greenwich Cablevision.

A 1991 book by Darrell Spurgeon says it was, at the time he was writing, mooted to be a museum, but it would seem that that money started talking. It became the Time Bar and then of course, INC with those Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen designs and the erotic wallpaper. At least I assume the erotic wallpaper’s still there – haven’t been in ages, since it’s now not open except as ‘Clarence Hall,’ a space for hire. At least it’s kept the name…

There’ s much more music hall to be had around these parts, but for now, if you fancy finding out at least a flavour of what the old halls would have been like, I note there’s going to be an evening of music hall at Greenwich Theatre on 11th March.

I am still hugely enjoying the Greenwich Theatre Book which is currently on loan to me. Rather than go into the theatre’s history or an account of the rebuild today, though, my eye was drawn to an illustration in the back pages. I have no idea where it’s from – whether it’s a playbill in a private collection, whether it’s one of the framed bills from the stairs at the theatre itself (if memory serves, they were recovered during the building work in the 60s and make fascinating reading) or from somewhere like the Heritage Centre. I’m probably hugely offending someone by reproducing it here – but it is a wonderful document and I just can’t resist it this morning.

It opens a world almost totally lost to us now.  What did Alf Davis, the descriptive vocalist, actually do? Who lost their trousers in the ‘screaming farce’ Checkmated? What did Carl Minto, the ‘eccentric musician’, play? And whatever happened to Maude Distin, ‘the only female baritone extant?’

Even the year of this old playbill, which promises four hours of amusement for a thru’penny bit, is uncertain. We know it’s for the week beginning Monday Jan 5th but which year? We know the theatre was called Barnard’s Palace at that time – which narrows it down a bit – it underwent a spruce-up in 1895 and from then, for a few years at least it was known first as Barnard’s Palace (after the promoter, Sam Barnard), then the Greenwich Hippodrome. If I was particularly nerdy and had more time that I do on a Monday morning I’d find some website dedicated to telling us which years in the late 1890s had the 5th January on a Monday. But although I’m definitely nerdy enough, time presses.

I am, of course, delighted to see that even well over a hundred years ago, they were still doing Aladdin – this year’s panto – which gives it all a wonderful symmetry, though despite the fact that we’re promised some pretty fab special effects over the coming weeks, I’m willing to bet that there won’t be any scenes containing ‘an entirely fresh series of animated subjects’ on the amazing EraScope (about which I can find nothing other than it might have been invented by a chap named Lacey, presumably a rival of Greenwich’s own Incredible Noakesoscope ).

But the entry that really caught my eye was the finale – the fabulously-titled Sorrows of Satan. What on earth could it be about, I wondered. Of course my images of Lucifer wracked in existential guilt were way off mark. This was the naughty nineties, not the angst-ridden twenty-first century.

It was actually a dramatisation of the novel by the Dan Brown of her day, Maria Corelli. Corelli, apparently, despite being snubbed by critics across the land, outsold H.G.Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling whenever she released her latest blockbuster. I somehow suspect none of the three chaps would be troubled by the relative sales figures today.

She sounds brilliant though. I mean – who couldn’t love a woman who was born into poverty (as the slightly more prosaic Mary Mackay)  but, when her novels sold by the shedload, spent the cash on a real Venetian gondola and attendant gondolier to punt her up and down the river Avon – and on campaigns trying to save the 17th Century buildings in Stratford? My kind of woman…

She wrote the smash-hit Sorrows of Satan in 1895 and, far short of the devil himself being upset, it’s a straight-ahead faustian-pact of a story.

The critics hated it but it had its admirers – not least of whom was Oscar Wilde (though he may have felt a kindred spirit in Corelli who was openly living with a woman at the time) and it was one of the first bestsellers (some churls reckon that was due to a change in the way libraries logged and bought books).

Basically, a penniless author called Geoffrey Tempest one day receives three letters. One is from a friend in Australia, inviting him to join him and start a new life, one telling him a relative has died and left him a fortune, and one a letter of introduction from mysterious fellow called Lucio…

I don’t really need to go into much more of the plot. I’m sure you can work it out. But it was a sure-solid hit with the public and it was not only made into a play but, in the 1920s, a film – by D W Griffith.

The only other thing worth mentioning about the story, BTW, is that the name Mavis was invented for the novel and was, I suspect, rather more glamorous at the time.

I have no idea what would have gone on in the theatrical version, but I’m guessing lots of saucy scenes of wretched excess followed by some lurid punishment (looks like there might have been a particularly juicy shipwreck scene) ending with a moralistic coda – but who can tell. It was bottom of the bill at Greenwich, which makes me think that it’s later rather than earlier – that it had probably already done the rounds once or twice. Maybe that can help date the bill itself.

More fun from The Greenwich Theatre Book another day…

UPDATE:

Okay – so the Monday 5th-thing was like red rag to a bull for The Phantom Webmaster P.I..

TPW writes:

1895: 5th Jan was a Saturday
1896: 5th Jan was a Sunday
1897: 5th Jan was a Tuesday
1898: 5th Jan was a Wednesday
1899: 5th Jan was a Thursday
1900: 5th Jan was a Friday
1901: 5th Jan was a Saturday (1900 not being a leap year)
1902: 5th Jan was a Sunday
1903: 5th Jan was a Monday

So – given that 1903 is the first year since The Sorrows of Satan was written, and that it wasn’t longe before Barnard’s Palace turned into the Hippodrome, I’m guessing that’s the year this bill’s from…

Another case closed for The Phantom Webmaster…

Yep, folks, the guys at Bubble Theatre are at it again, creating something as-yet-a-mystery but without doubt truly exciting for us to enjoy while wandering round sundry parks across South London this summer.

They’re based over at Rotherhithe and despite having their grants cut to virtually nothing (they committed the cardinal sin of producing theatre people might actually enjoy…) they’re still creating really incredible, innovative stuff.

If you’ve never seen a Bubble show, then it’s hard to fully describe the magic created by a promenade performance that uses the very landscape it’s set in as both constraint and opportunity.

Beginning in the last of the day’s sun, the performance glides through the dusk and plunges into darkness, using a combination of whatever landscape the venue provides, some really quirky props, the actors skills, the audience’s imagination and quite a lot of torches to make something unique to each space. Last year’s Odyssey was absolutely wonderful – I still can’t walk through a certain part of Oxleas Wood without thinking of the trees and their haunting mementos of sailors lost at sea.

Losing their cash made Bubble return to the drawing board and think of new ways that they could involve their audience, and they came up with Fan made Theatre . People buy ‘stakes’ in the production (which in reality amounts to buying a ticket in advance and giving Bubble a fiver) which means that they actually have a hands-on say in what show goes on.

Stakeholders are invited to submit ideas for shows they’d like to see. It can be a story, a title or even just an idea – the only things they ask you to bear in mind are that the show needs to be quite robust for English weather in July/August (I’ve trudged round sundry parks in pouring rain, which sometimes actually made the shows even more magical) and be something that would enchant people of all ages.

When all the ideas are in (the deadline’s 19th April, so get your skates on) they’ll be discussed by a panel of ‘glittering intellectuals’ (Yours Truly was invited to join it, but sadly the paper bag really gets in the way of play reading…) and whittled down to a pithy five.

Everyone gets to vote on the shortlist. This year a team of actors will work on each of the 5 shortlisted proposals during the week of 3rd-7th May. Stakeholders are invited to drop into the workshop and/or come along on Saturday 8th May.

Despite the best efforts of various funding bodies who would rather we all saw up-yer-arse Art rather than exciting, innovative – but ultimately popular (eeek! the Arts Council shudders) theatre, lovely London Bubble Theatre company is still managing to hold out against the odds.

Given a spot of grudging ‘transitional’ funding last year, they’re now looking to find quirky alternatives to traditional ways of putting on a show right here. Given Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland are otherwise engaged, they’ve come up with ‘Fan-Made Theatre’ and I, for one am going to be right in there.

You buy a stake in the show – which is, basically, a ticket-up-front. It costs twenty quid (just a tenner if you count for concessions.) But here’s where the good bit comes in – you also give ‘em your ideas about what you’d like them to do in the way of a show this year.

There’s then a big online bunfight (okay, okay, ‘discussion’) and, once all the ideas have been mulled over by the theatre’s new stakeholders (i.e. us,) there’s a vote. The winning idea gets the classic Jonathan Petherbridge treatment, and goes on tour as a promenade performance this summer, taking in sundry London parks, gardens and woods (including, I’m sure, our very own Oxleas…)

And on top of all that – there’s a special Fan-Made shindig at the end of it for the stakeholders.

I adore London Bubble. My mates and I have made a habit of going en-masse to pretty much every London production they’ve done over the years. I love the world they create – an all-encompassing universe that feeds not just your eye – but your periphery of vision too – you’re always aware that slightly-out-of-this world creepy stuff is going on just out of sight or round the corner, and that if you’re very lucky you might just catch a glimpse of it.

I’m definitely going to purchase a stake in the show (so much more fun than just buying a ticket…) and I urge you to do the same. Get a ticket, get involved and tell ‘em what you want to see. They are too precious to lose.

Find out about it here – see you in the summer at whatever magical event they create (I’ll be one of those just-out-of-sight creepy things…)