Mercoledi Musicale

Grimaldi as clown in the pantomine Harlequin &
Frair Bacon at Covent Garden in December 1820
as captured by Issac Robert Cruickshank.

Museum of the City of London

Last week I wrote about the great clown and namesake of every clown in the world: Joseph "Joey" Grimaldi. His story is a fascinating if sad one of a child performer who grew to become a major star of his era but ended, if not forgotten, certainly neglected.  It's recorded that at his final benefit on 27 June 1828 he aroused himself from his sick bed - he was in constant pain from injuries incurred during a childhood and later life of performing his famous tricks - and entertained an audience of 2000 who had waited for hours to gain entrance to Drury Lane.  He lived another nine years - the last few alone (his wife and son had both died), in penury and prone to alcoholism.

But if his life was an example of the sad clown, on stage he was a remarkable entertainer who could quell even the toughest audience - and audiences of the time were tough!  And nothing pleased his audience more than when he stood centre stage and told the tale of the little old lady who sold her codlins (baked apples) in the streets of London. 

Hot Codlins - a watercolour from 1827 by
Charles Cooper Henderson.

Museum of the City of London

Peddlers plied their wares on the streets of every major European city.   Though shops abounded the streets of London were filled with the cries of men, women and children hawking food stuffs of every kind - produce, game, meat, cooked food, sweet snacks and there were even nutmeg grinders.  Milkmaids would sell you milk right from the cow that they lead into the square by your house; should you be lactose intolerant (yes they knew what it was) there was asses' milk readily available with the beast trotted up to your door step.   Vegetables, herbs and fruit were carried through the streets in baskets balanced on the heads of the sellers. And Grimaldi's little old lady would have transported her brazier and codlings much after the fashion of the woman in the drawing at the left. Indeed many of Grimaldi's audience may well have bought one of her apples, hot, hot, hot to have as a snack during the performance or as a missal for a less than appreciated artiste.

When Grimaldi sang his little ditty the only thing the audience ever threw was the last word of each verse.  Here's the only version I could find of the original sung by, appropriately, The Grimaldi Band.

January 14 - 1933: The controversial "Bodyline" cricket tactics used by Douglas Jardine's England peak when Australian captain Bill Woodfull is hit over the heart.

The Importance of Understanding Earnest

Not the right title, you say! Well tell that to Ted Dykstra, because frankly I'm wondering if he understands Oscar Wilde's sublime comedy of manners. Based on an interview he gave the Ottawa Citizen I had the impression he did. Watching Friday night's opening performance of the NAC English Theatre season I have my doubts.

Now there is more than one way of approaching Wilde's play of improbable probabilities and I have seen several but they have all had one thing in common: they were earnest.  According to several dictionaries I've consulted the adjective means "resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction."  Wilde himself refers to it as "a trivial play for serious people" and that is what makes it both funny and enduring.   It seems that Dykstra took "trivial" to mean farcical.  What he presented us with was a French bedroom farce without the slamming boudoir doors.   Pratfalls were taken, things jumped over, things thrown, bellows bellowed, audiences winked at and double takes taken - the only things missing were those door slams and the crack of Harlequin's slapstick.

Don't get me wrong I love  farce - bedroom or just good old fashioned knockabout - but if that's what you want to direct then why not choose one of the many great pieces by Feydeau, Labiche or Ben Travers:  revivals of Italian Straw Hat or Rookery Nook are long overdue.  But to take one of the wittiest plays in the English language and turn it into a knockabout comedy - sorry old man, it's just not done in the best of (play)houses.

Director Ted Dykstra (centre on floor) and his cast for the NAC English Theatre's presentation of
Oscar Wilde's The Important of Being Earnest.

NAC Photo: Andree Lanthier

Based on the concept they were given it may be unfair to say much of the individual performances except that the ladies fared better than the men.  Unfortunately Alex McCooeye (Algernon) and Christopher Morris (Jack) bore the brunt of much of the clowning with Morris spending most of the second act delivering his dialogue at a relentless and frantic shout.  Perhaps because she sat or stood in almost monolithic splendor Karen Robinson's Lady Bracknell was the most convincing performance of the evening.   Her very stillness made her reactions more telling and drew bigger laughs than all the mugging in the world could ever achieve.

Designer Patrick Clark's sets and costumes caught the tone of playful seriousness - both Lady Bracknell and Algernon were slightly over-the-top but still within the bounds of early Edwardian good taste.  And as always with the NAC the production values were of the highest standard.  I noticed that we did not receive a warning about the fact that "real cigarettes" would be smoked at this performance - let's hope the PC police don't get on them for that one.

I saw Mr Dykstra, who I admire greatly as a performer and writer, in the audience and can only hope that he took note of the reaction around him:  yes we laughed at some of the business but the most sincere and loudest laughs came from Wilde's dialogue.  I only wish the trust he had shown when speaking of the play had carried over to the stage.


A separate note:  The evening had begun with greetings from Elder Annie Smith-St George who reminded us that we sat on unceded Algonquin land but more important asked that we quietly stand and remember our brothers who had become one with the Spirit world in the past three days.  She spoke for a moment or two of the Creator who gave us the gift of laughter and joy that we would share in this place.  It was a lovely and touching few minutes.

October 25 - 1854: The Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

Mr. Stanfield's Grand Moving Picture

I've been going through a whole pile of unpublished posts, some dating back to 2008, realizing that a goodly number should just be deleted, others are dated, others kept as examples of good ideas badly executed and then maybe a few that I could complete and post.  This entry was originally intended to be published this past January as I was heading over to London but packing and, as I recall, a technical glitch waylaid it.  What called it to mind is a remarkable slide show on the BBC website of paintings by Clarkson Stanfield.

January 13, 2012 - 1910: The first public radio broadcast takes place; a live performance of the opera Cavalleria rusticana is sent out over the airwaves from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, New York.

I'm heading off to London tonight - it will be tomorrow I guess by the time this is posted -  to take part in an English tradition that goes back 300 years - the Christmas pantomime. Anyone who has followed this blog will know that I don't mean the "walking against the wind" "trapped in an glass cage" stuff that you see in the summer from buskers who think they are Marcel Marceau.  Pantomime or better yet Panto is that particular form of British entertainment that began when John Rich introduced the characters of Harlequin and company to the London theatre public in 1717.

What started off as "low opera" or intermezzi became a very specific form of full length entertainment that has evolved over the past three centuries, changed with the times and tastes, gone through bad periods and now seems to be on a new high.  For many years here in Ottawa we were visited each Christmastide by pantos produced in England by Tudor Davies and brought lock, stock and Dame from England.  Then Ross Petty took over and gave us amongst others a very memorable Aladdin.  But now it seems the only Christmas entertainment we get is another version of The Nutcracker.  So off I go to London to get my dose of panto for this year - and to see Dame Edna Everage in her debut as The Fairy of London in Dick Whittington.  She is one of many "stars" appearing throughout the British Isles in some 120 odd pantos being produced this year.

The London audiences of the 1828-29 Panto season were treated to an entertainment in the old "Grimaldi" tradition with not one but three Harlequins, a clown, Pierrot, Mr Stanfield's Grand Moving Picture and "the Surprising Foreign Dwarf".  All that preceded by a drama and a satirical piece.  A very full evening indeed.

Though there have always been "stars" in panto - John Rich, Joey Grimaldi, Dan Leno, Vesta Tilley, Herbert Campbell, Norman Wisdom, Julie Andrews, Cliff Richard (Cliff Richard???) - there was a period when audiences came not just for their favourites but for the processions, patriotic tableaux, transformation scenes and stage spectacle.  During the glories days at Drury Lane it was not unknown for a stage designer to take a bow on opening night after his latest creation had been unveiled particularly if that designer was Clarkson Stanfield and he had just produced one of his remarkable dioramas or moving panoramas.

We are assured that "Stanfield's Grand Moving Picture" was "the whole painted by Mr Stanfield from sketches made by himself".   It was a grand tour that took his audience from Spithead to Constantinople.

According to a playbill - one of the four (I've posted items about the other three here) that have been in my various homes for the past 40 odd years - for The Queen Bee or Harlequin and the Fairy Hive, the Drury Lane Christmas panto in 1828-29, Stanfield created a moving picture that took the viewers on a sea voyage from  "Spithead at Sunrise" through the Straits of Gibraltar and ending with a "Grand View of Constantinople".

Gibraltar - seen from two perspectives in the top and middle paintings - was a favourite subject for Clarkson Stanfield's brush as were stormy seas such as this one buffeting the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.  Perhaps this is not so unusual given that his early life was spent at sea as a "press ganged" member of the Royal Navy.  Stanfield abandoned scenery painting after the Drury Lane panto in 1834 and devoted his time to easel painting.

En-route the, no-doubt astounded, audience witnessed the Cowes Regatta and according to the playbill saw the entire "Turkish Squadron".  It is difficult to see how this fit in with the preceding or succeeding locations but logic wasn't necessary in a panto so why not go from Constantinople to "A Village near London".  And keep in mind that this was only Scene 13 of 17 of the third piece on the bill for the evening of January 20, 1829. The audience had already seen a drama entitled Charles the Tenth and Sheridan's satire The Critic.  It was a full evening's entertainment.

The principle behind the diorama or moving panorama was a one - a  grand painted canvas tracing one continuous scene unrolled across the width of the that unrolled across the width of the stage and allowed characters to made

Of his scenic display that year the Times of London wrote:

 When our memory glances back a few years and we compare in "the mind's eye", the dingy, filthy scenery which was exhibited here - trees, like inverted mops, of a brick-dust hue - buildings generally at war with perspective - water as opaque as the surrounding rocks, and clouds not a bit more transparent - when we compare these things with what we now see, the alteration strikes us as nearly miraculous. This is mainly owing to Mr. Stanfield. To the effective execution of the duties belonging to the scenic department, he brought every necessary qualification - a knowledge of light and shade which enabled him to give to his scenes great transparency and a ready and judicious taste for composition, whether landscape, architecture or coast, but more especially for the last . . . His present scene is fully equal - in some parts superior - to any thing he has heretofore done ... The view of Lord Nelson's ship the Victory, is the most gorgeous specimen of naval architectural painting that we ever saw ... The view of Gibraltar, bristling with fortifications is uncommonly fine. It exhibits an extent of space ... and a grandeur of elevation which seem to say "I am invulnerable".

The voyage of the John Bull was followed in this diorama as it set out from London, past the Tower and onward to Europe.  The various locales rolled behind the set piece of the ship as the passengers, and no doubt the audience, expressed pleasure and surprise at the vistas opening up to them.

First introduced into panto in 1820 at Covent Garden the moving panoramas consisted of a large canvas - Stanfield's design for Zoraster at Drury Lane was 482 feet long - rolled horizontally between two cylinders across the upstage area.  A diorama - like the one Stanfield produced in 1828 - was similar but produced a three dimensional effect with two painted, cut-out and sometimes transparent canvases place one in front of the other.  This allowed for further elements like the yachts in the Regatta to be moved between the two.  It was a triumph of the scene painters' illusionary art wedded with modern gas lighting and stage machinery.


To show how little some things have changed the panto I saw in Wimbledon, Dick Whittington, included a moving panorama that took us with the eponymous hero under the sea.  It wasn't painted canvas but projected and in line with modern trends and technology we donned Dame Edna glasses to witness the wonders of the deep in 3D.  Who says panto isn't modern and up to date????

07 September - 1911: Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.