West End Theatre: past plays, posters and passions

NINETEENTH-CENTURY THEATRE SPECIAL

While walking around the exhibition of West End Theatre in the 19th Century at the National Theatre, which features posters, playbills and costumes, Heather Neill talks to Judith Bottomley, local studies librarian at the Westminster City Archive, source of many of the exhibits, and Robert Tanitch, author of The London Stage in the Nineteenth Century (Carnegie), about the dramatic arts of the Regency and Victorian eras.

Spoken drama was seen as a threat because it often had a political message – licences were a way of controlling theatre and preventing riots.

Victorian theatre Theatre Royal Drury Lane Shakespeare Sarah Siddons Robert Tanitch Regency theatre melodrama Judith Bottomley Henry Irving West End