Hi all! In looking for reviews of some of the performances featured in the volumes, I've been spending a lot of time looking at periodicals such as the Theatrical Times and the Era, and got to thinking about the variations in when theatres were open for their seasons. Below is an infographic (and link to live version) based on information I have for a selection of regional theatres and the dates which they were open in 1846.

Digging into the openings and closings of the different theatres has provided some really interesting context for what was going on behind the scenes when these playbills were being produced, and how popular the performances were proving to be. For instance in Liverpool, which had several different theatres, the Royal Liver Theatre's season was 'prematurely brought to a close' due to poor attendance, with the Theatrical Times stating that it 'is shut up, the game is over’ on August 22nd!

This is just a selection of the theatres covered in 1846, I deliberately chose to feature ones which were linked to the volumes or had some appropriately theatrical moments, such as opening and closing several times in a season.

https://infogram.com/theatredates-1hnq41ldd8qk23z?live

  • 57kB

screen-shot-2018-08-03-at-145337.png

I've been working on something similar in an attempt to track the opening of various theatres within a provincial circuit. At the moment I'm focusing on the York circuit, it's known which theatres formed the circuit (York, Leeds, Hull, Wakefield, Doncaster and Pontefract) but I've found very little information on when each theatre's season occurred so I'm attempting to piece this together from playbills during the period 1828-1830.

From your research I can't help but wonder what happened to the performers who'd been working at the Royal Liver Theatre. I remember reading in a newspaper article that when the Surrey Theatre closed unexpectedly in 1832, apparently due to the death of its manager, the company decamped to the Westminster Theatre.

Frisby Oh that sounds really interesting! Yes, I went with 1846 because it had the most documentation, tracking openings earlier in the century looks a lot more challenging.

I would imagine they did decamp to somewhere else, I have a vague memory of quite an entertaining entry in one of the periodicals from a group of performers complaining that their manager had abandoned them and so they were looking for somewhere else to go, will try and dig it up today! The Liver seems to have become thought of as a bit of a cursed place for that year, when it closed again in December the Theatrical Times described the closing as: '‘This unfortunate place closed on Tuesday, after playing 14 nights to very bad houses’ -- so I'd imagine the performers might be glad to get out!!

    beeashlell I'm sure there were many occasions where the performers were happy to get away from a theatre. One example I've come across is from 1820; the Exeter theatre didn't have a good start to the year, there were two Royal deaths which meant respectful closures, and then a fire which destroyed the theatre (thankfully no-one was injured). This is possibly why in May of that year there was an advert for the theatre in Durham announcing "Mr & Mrs Young, from the Theatre Royal, Exeter"!

      2 years later

      With Easter coming up, it's a good time to bump up this thread on patterns in theatrical seasons...

        Write a Reply...