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Airs On A Shoestring
''Airs on a Shoestring'' was a British musical revue, first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 22 April 1953. The show, described as "an intimate revue", was devised and directed by Laurier Lister. Cast members included Max Adrian, Madeleine Dring, Moyra Fraser, Betty Marsden, and Denis Quilley. Musical numbers included material by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann Donald Ibrahim Swann (30 September 1923 – 23 March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders. Life Donald Swann was born .... "Airs on a Shoestring", ''Guide to Musical Theatre'' Retrieved 29 March 2017 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932. Though most famous for their visual spectacle, revues frequently satirized contemporary figures, news or literature. Similar to the related subforms of operetta and musical theatre, the revue art form brings together music, dance and sketches to create a compelling show. In contrast to these, however, revue does not have an overarching storyline. Rather, a general theme serves as the motto for a loosely-related series of acts that alternate between solo performances and dance ensembles. Owing to high ticket prices, ribald publicity campaigns and the occasional use of prurient material, the revue was typically patronized by audience members who earned more and felt even less restricted by middle-class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre and won the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999. History The first theatre The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre. Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays were staged here, including ''Randall's Thumb'', ''Creatures of Impulse'' (with music by Alberto Randegger), ''Great Expectations'' (adapted from the Dickens novel), and ''On Gu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurier Lister
George Laurier Lister, OBE (22 April 1907 – 30 September 1986) was an English theatre writer, actor, director and producer, best known for a series of revues presented in London in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was later associated with Laurence Olivier in the West End theatre, West End and at the Chichester Festival. From 1964 to 1975 he was director and administrator of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford. Life and career Early years Laurier Lister was born in Sanderstead, Croydon, Surrey, the son of an English father, George Daniel Lister, and an American mother, Susie May Lister, ''née'' Kooy.Herbert, pp. 1090–1091Marriott, R. B. "Laurier Lister: Manager in Two Capitals", ''The Stage'', 26 September 1957, p. 8 He was educated at Dulwich College and then studied for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his first professional appearance on the stage at the Gielgud Theatre, Globe Theatre, London, on 20 February 1925, as a dancer in the nightclub scene in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Adrian
Max Adrian (born Guy Thornton Bor; 1 November 1903 – 19 January 1973) was an Irish stage, film and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. In addition to his success as a character actor in classical drama, he was known for his work as a singer and comic actor in revue and musicals, and in one-man shows about George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, and in cinema and television films, notably Ken Russell's ''Song of Summer'' as the ailing composer Delius. Early years Adrian was born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor and Mabel Lloyd Thornton. He was born in the provincial Bank of Ireland branch in Kilkenny, where his father was the bank manager, into a Church of Ireland family, the seventh of eight children. His paternal ancestry was Dutch people, Dutch, from settlers who arrived in Ireland with William III of England, William of Orange in 1689. He w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madeleine Dring
Madeleine Winefride Isabelle Dring (7 September 1923 – 26 March 1977) was an English composer, pianist, singer and actress. Life Madeleine Dring spent the first four years of her life at Raleigh Road, Harringay, before the family moved to Streatham. She showed talent at an early age and was accepted into the junior department of the Royal College of Music where she began on her tenth birthday. She was offered scholarships for violin and piano and chose violin. She studied piano as a secondary instrument, with RCM students guiding her studies for the first several years. As part of their training, all of the students performed in the children's theatre under the guidance of Angela Bull. Dring formally began composition studies at the junior department with Stanley Drummond Wolff in 1937, in 1938 with Leslie Fly, and the next two years worked with Sir Percy Buck. Near the end of her studies she was assigned Lilian Gaskell for piano studies. She continued at the Royal College f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moyra Fraser
Moyra Fraser (3 December 1923 – 13 December 2009) was an Australian-born English actress and ballet dancer, who is best known for playing Penny in the long-running sitcom '' As Time Goes By''. Her sister was the actress Shelagh Fraser. She married author Douglas Sutherland, with whom she had a daughter, and Roger Lubbock, by whom she had two sons. Early life Moyra Fraser was born in Sydney, Australia to John Newton Mappin Fraser, a director of Mappin & Webb, and Vera Eleanor (née Beardshaw)Who's who in theatre, John Parker, 12th ed., 1957, p. 526 on 3 December 1923 and with her family emigrated to the United Kingdom in June 1924. Educated at St Christopher's, Kingswood, and Eversfield, Sutton, she left school at 14 to take up a scholarship with Sadler's Wells Ballet, where she was befriended by Robert Helpmann. Stage career Fraser joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet after training, dancing the title role in ''Giselle'', the Lilac Fairy in '' The Sleeping Princess'' and creating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betty Marsden
Betty Marsden (24 February 1919 – 18 July 1998) was an English comedy actress. She is particularly remembered as a cast member of the radio series ''Beyond Our Ken'' and ''Round the Horne''. Marsden also appeared in two Carry On films, ''Carry On Regardless'' (1961) and ''Carry On Camping'' (1969). Early life Marsden was born in West Derby, Liverpool, and grew up in near poverty in Somerset. Her music teacher recognised her talent at the age of six, and became her guardian. She attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and during World War II she entertained the troops as a member of ENSA. It was at this time that she met and married her husband, Dr Jimmy Wilson Muggoch, an army doctor from Edinburgh. Career From 1958 to 1968, Marsden was among the cast of the radio series ''Beyond Our Ken'' and ''Round the Horne'', where she played most of the female characters. Perhaps her most famous catchphrase was "many, many, many times", delivered in the dry, reedy tones of Bea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Quilley
Denis Clifford Quilley, OBE (26 December 1927 – 5 October 2003) was an English actor and singer. From a family with no theatrical connections, Quilley was determined from an early age to become an actor. He was taken on by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in his teens, and after a break for compulsory military service he began a West End career in 1950, succeeding Richard Burton in ''The Lady's Not For Burning''. In the 1950s he appeared in revue, musicals, operetta and on television as well as in classic and modern drama in the theatre. During the 1960s Quilley established himself as a leading actor, making his first films and starring on Australian television. In the early 1970s he was a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977 in the central role in ''Privates on Parade'', which was later made into a feature film. His later parts in musicals included the title role in ''Sweeney Todd'' (1980) and Georges in '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Flanders
Michael Henry Flanders (1 March 1922 – 14 April 1975) was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann. As a young man Flanders seemed to be heading for a successful acting career. He contracted polio in 1943 while serving in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and for the rest of his life was reliant on a wheelchair. He made a career as a prolific broadcaster on radio and later television, and together with his old schoolfriend, the composer Donald Swann, he wrote successful songs in the late 1940s and early and mid-1950s for revues in the West End of London. In 1956 they themselves performed some of these songs, along with new songs, in a two-man revue, ''At the Drop of a Hat''. This show, and its successor, ''At the Drop of Another Hat'', ran with occasional short breaks from 1956 to 1967 and played in theatres throughout the British Isles, the US, Australia and elsewhere. During and af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Swann
Donald Ibrahim Swann (30 September 1923 – 23 March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders. Life Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann (born Piszóva), was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution. Swann's great-grandfather, Alfred Trout Swan, a draper from Lincolnshire, emigrated to Russia in 1840 and married the daughter of the horologer to the tsars. Some time later the family added a second 'n' to their surname. His uncle Alfred wrote the first biography of Alexander Scriabin in English. The family moved to London, where Swann attended Dulwich College Preparatory School and West ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1953 Musicals
Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia. ** The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. * January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying. * January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into ''I Love Lucy'', to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day. This record has yet to be broken. * January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States. * January 24 ** Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother, and six-year-old son). ** Leader of East Germany Walter Ulbricht announces that agriculture will be co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revues
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932. Though most famous for their visual spectacle, revues frequently satirized contemporary figures, news or literature. Similar to the related subforms of operetta and musical theatre, the revue art form brings together music, dance and sketches to create a compelling show. In contrast to these, however, revue does not have an overarching storyline. Rather, a general theme serves as the motto for a loosely-related series of acts that alternate between solo performances and dance ensembles. Owing to high ticket prices, ribald publicity campaigns and the occasional use of prurient material, the revue was typically patronized by audience members who earned more and felt even less restricted by middle-class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
