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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] |
Sloane Square
Sloane Square is a small hard-landscaped square on the boundaries of the central London districts of Belgravia and Chelsea, located southwest of Charing Cross, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The area forms a boundary between the two largest aristocratic estates in London, the Grosvenor Estate and the Cadogan. The square was formerly known as 'Hans Town', laid out in 1771 to a plan of by Henry Holland Snr. and Henry Holland Jnr. Both the square and Hans Town were named after Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), an Anglo-Irish doctor who, jointly with his appointed trustees, owned the land at the time. Location The bulk of Chelsea, especially the east end more local to Sloane Square, is architecturally and economically similar to South Kensington, Belgravia, St James's, and Mayfair. The largely retail at ground floor Kings Road with its design and interior furnishing focus intersects at Sloane Square the residential, neatly corniced and dressed façades of Sloa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Marin Labiche
Eugène Marin Labiche (6 May 181522 January 1888) was a French dramatist. He remains famous for his contribution to the vaudeville genre and his passionate and domestic pochads. In the 1860s, he reached his peak with a series of successes including Le Voyage de M. Perrichon (1860), La Poudre aux yeux (1861), La Station Champbaudet (1862) and La Cagnotte (1864). He worked with Jacques Offenbach, then director of the Bouffes-Parisiens, to write librettos for operettas and for several comic operas. His 1851 farce '' The Italian Straw Hat'', written with Marc-Michel, has been adapted many times to stage and screen. Early life He was born into a bourgeois family and studied law. At the age of twenty, he contributed a short story to ''Chérubin'' magazine, entitled "Les plus belles sont les plus fausses" ("The most beautiful are the most fake/false"). A few others followed, but failed to catch the attention of the public. Career Labiche tried his hand at dramatic criticism i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine (20 November 1910 – 20 January 1966) was an English theatrical manager, director, teacher, and actor based in London from the early 1930s until his death. He also worked in TV and film. Early life and education Devine was born in Hendon, London to Georgios Devine (son of an Irish father and a Greek mother) and a Canadian mother, Ruth Eleanor Cassady (from Vancouver). His father was a clerk in Martins Bank. Ruth Devine became mentally unstable after her son's birth, and his parents' marriage, deeply unhappy throughout his early childhood, had broken down by the time he was in his early teens. At this time he was sent to Clayesmore School, an independent boys' boarding school founded by his uncle Alexander "Lex" Devine, who took his nephew under his wing hoping that he would take over the running of the school. In 1929, Devine went to Oxford University to read for a degree in history at Wadham College. It was at Oxford that his interest in theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Lewenstein
Silvion Oscar Lewenstein (18 January 1917 – 23 February 1997)Robert Murph"Lewenstein, (Silvion) Oscar (1917–1997)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. was a British theatre and film producer, who helped create some of the leading British theatre and film productions of the 1950s and 1960s.William Grimes ''The New York Times'', 10 March 1997; accessed 15 November 2012. Early life and career Born in Hackney, London, Lewenstein was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who had fled antisemitism before the Russian Revolution. He spent most of his childhood in Hove, Sussex. His father's formerly successful plywood business went into a decline during his teens, the family returned to London, and the younger Lewenstein left school. A former member of the Young Communist League, now active in the Communist Party itself, he became involved in the Unity Theatre movement via his friendship with Ted Willis. After a period working for the Unity Theatre just after the war, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Movie Theater
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a building that contains auditoria for viewing films (also called movies) for entertainment. Most, but not all, movie theaters are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium while the dialogue, sounds, and music are played through a number of wall-mounted speakers. Since the 1970s, subwoofers have been used for low-pitched sounds. Since the 2010s, the majority of movie theaters have been equipped for digital cinema projection, removing the need to create and transport a physical film print on a heavy reel. A great variety of films are shown at cinemas, ranging from animated films to bloc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as ''Man and Superman'' (1902), ''Pygmalion'' (1913) and '' Saint Joan'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harley Granville-Barker
Harley Granville-Barker (25 November 1877 – 31 August 1946) was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist. After early success as an actor in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, he increasingly turned to directing and was a major figure in British theatre in the Edwardian and inter-war periods. As a writer his plays, which tackled difficult and controversial subject matter, met with a mixed reception during his lifetime but have continued to receive attention. Biography Early life and acting career Harley Granville-Barker was born in London, England on 25 November 1877. He left school at 14 and began a career in acting. As his career blossomed, he seemed to excel in roles that were a culmination of intelligence and romantic dreaminess. This landed him many roles such as; Tanner in ''Man and Superman'', Cusins in ''Major Barbara'', Marchbanks in '' Candida'', and Dubedat in '' The Doctor's Dilemma''. To be more specific the Dubedat and Cusins cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Lewis (actor)
Frederic Lewis Tuffley (23 October 1855 – 1 April 1935), better known by his stage name, Eric Lewis, was an English comedian, actor and singer. In a career spanning five decades, he starred in numerous comedies and in a few musical comedy hits, but he is probably best remembered today as the understudy to George Grossmith in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas of the 1880s who left the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company just in time to give Henry Lytton his big break. Lewis began performing in comic musical sketches in Brighton in the 1870s. He made his London performing debut in 1880 and joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1882, where he understudied Grossmith until 1887. Lewis then performed in a number of very successful musical comedies and other comedies for the next decade but devoted himself to the non-musical comedy stage, performing mostly in contemporary comedies by Arthur Wing Pinero, George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie and R. C. Carton until 1925. Biography Lewis was b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydney Grundy
Sydney Grundy (23 March 1848 – 4 July 1914) was an English dramatist. Most of his works were adaptations of European plays, and many became successful enough to tour throughout the English-speaking world. He is, however, perhaps best remembered today as the librettist of several comic operas, notably ''Haddon Hall''. Life and career Grundy was born in Manchester, England, the son of Alderman Charles Sydney Grundy. He was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and studied law at the Middle Temple. He was called to the bar in 1869 and practised law until 1876. Early career His early one-act farce, ''A Little Change'', was produced at the Haymarket Theatre in 1872 by the Kendals. This was followed by ''All at Sea'' in 1873, also starring the Kendals. In 1876, Grundy published ''The Days of His Vanity''. He wrote ''Mammon'' for W. H. Vernon at the Strand Theatre in 1877 and ''After Long Years'' for the Folly Theatre in 1879. Early comedies included ''The Glass of Fashion'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (24 May 185523 November 1934) was an English playwright and, early in his career, actor. Pinero was drawn to the theatre from an early age, and became a professional actor at the age of 19. He gained experience as a supporting actor in British provincial theatres, and from 1876 to 1881 was a member of Henry Irving's company, based at the Lyceum Theatre, London, Lyceum Theatre, London. Pinero wrote his first play in 1877. Seven years later, having written 15 more, three of them highly successful, he abandoned acting and became a full-time playwright. He first became known for a series of farces, of which ''The Magistrate (play), The Magistrate'' (1885) was the longest-running. During the 1890s he turned to serious subjects. ''The Second Mrs Tanqueray'' (1893), dealing with a woman with a scandalous past, was regarded as shocking, but ran well and made a large profit. His other successes included ''Trelawny of the 'Wells', Trelawny of the "Wells"'' (1898), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Clayton (British Actor)
John Clayton (14 February 1845 – 27 February 1888) was an English actor. After building a career in a range of parts, he became best known for his roles in the farces of Arthur Wing Pinero. With Arthur Cecil he was joint manager of the Court Theatre in London from 1883 until his death, aged 43, while on tour in Liverpool. Life and career Early years Clayton was born John Alfred Clayton Calthrop at Gosberton, Lincolnshire, on 14 February 1845, the son of James Thompson Calthrop and his wife Edna, ''née'' Knowles. After some successful amateur experiences he made his first professional appearance on the stage on 27 February 1866, at the St James's Theatre, as George Hastings in ''She Stoops to Conquer''. The theatrical newspaper '' The Era'' reported, "He has a good figure, and showed an easy self-possession which enabled him to acquit himself with credit". The paper added that it was doubtful if light comedy was the genre in which the debutant would make his reputation. Ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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