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Palgrave Macmillan

Nation and Race in West End Revue

1910–1930

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. David Linton

    1. Kingston University, London, UK

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  • Fills a gap in understanding how and why London West End revue was such an exciting, popular and influential form throughout the twentieth century
  • Challenges previous theatre historiographies and calls for a new understanding of how popular musical performance forms operate
  • Connects diverse popular theatre genres, and in doing so links revue to contemporary practices across theatre and performance today

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre (PSBMT)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • David Linton
    Pages 1-16

  3. Reading London West End Revue

    • David Linton
    Pages 17-54

  4. Revue in the Modern World: Possibilities and Perils—West End Identities

    • David Linton
    Pages 55-76

  5. New Insecurities, New Form, New Identity—National Identity and Raciologies in Eightpence a Mile (1913)

    • David Linton
    Pages 77-103

  6. Degeneration/Regeneration—The Remaking of Nation in Wartime West End Spectacular Revue

    • David Linton
    Pages 105-132

  7. Blackbirds in London: Black Internationalism and the Black Imaginary

    • David Linton
    Pages 133-151

  8. Class Distinction and National Identity in 1920s West End Intimate Revue

    • David Linton
    Pages 153-179

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 181-202
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Keywords

About this book

London West End revue constituted a particular response to mounting social, political, and cultural insecurities over Britain’s status and position at the beginning of the twentieth century. Insecurities regarding Britain’s colonial rule as exemplified in Ireland and elsewhere, were compounded by growing demands for social reform across the country — the call for women’s emancipation, the growth of the labour, and the trade union movements all created a climate of mounting disillusion. Revue correlated the immediacy of this uncertain world, through a fragmented vocabulary of performance placing satire, parody, social commentary, and critique at its core and found popularity in reflecting and responding to the variations of the new lived experiences. Multidisciplinary in its creation and realisation, revue incorporated dance, music, design, theatre, and film appropriating pre-modern theatre forms, techniques, and styles such as burlesque, music hall, pantomime, minstrelsy, and pierrot.Experimenting with narrative and expressions of speech, movement, design, and sound, revue displayed ambivalent representations that reflected social and cultural negotiations of previously essentialised identities in the modern world. Part of a wide and diverse cultural space at the beginning of the twentieth century it was acknowledged both by the intellectual avant-garde and the workers theatre movement not only as a reflexive action, but also as an evolving dynamic multidisciplinary performance model, which was highly influential across British culture. Revue displaced the romanticism of musical comedy by combining a satirical listless detachment with a defiant sophistication that articulated a fading British hegemonic sensibility, a cultural expression of a fragile and changing social and political order.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kingston University, London, UK

    David Linton

About the author

David Linton is a performer/theatre practitioner and senior lecturer in Drama at Kingston University, London, UK. His research explores issues of resistance, adaptation, and exchange in theatre. This focuses on participatory arts practice, black British performance and pre-modern popular theatre forms, and their contemporary applications, specifically mask/minstrelsy, pantomime, burlesque/neo burlesque, cabaret, pierrot, hip hop theatre, and revue.

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