A companion to UEP’s Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (now in its third reprint). A genre that has left more of a mark on British and American culture than we may imagine” (Gothic Studies).
London’s Grand Guignol was established in the early 1920s at the Little Theatre in the West End. It was a high-profile venture that enjoyed popular success as much as critical controversy. On its side were some of the finest actors on the English stage, in the shape of Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, and a team of extremely able writers, including Noël Coward.
London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror considers the importance and influence of the English Grand Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts. It also presents a selection of ten remakarble English-language Grand Guignol plays, some of which were banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the censor of the day, and have never been published or publicly performed. Among the plays in the book is a previously unpublished work by Noël Coward, The Better Half, first performed at the Little Theatre in 1922.
The reviewer in the journal Gothic Studies wrote, of the authors’ previous book: “having recently taught a module on Grand Guignol with third year drama students, it is also worth noting that this book captured their imaginations in a way that few other set texts seem to manage.”
Table of Content
SECTION 1
Chapter 1: A History of London’s Grand Guignol
Chapter 2: London’s Grand Guignol and Issues of Genre and Writing
Chapter 3: London’s Grand Guignol: Performers and Performing
Chapter 4: London’s Grand Guignol: Censorship and Reception
Chapter 5: London’s Grand Guignol and the Reviewers
Chapter 6: The Aftermath and Legacy of London’s Grand Guignol
SECTION 2
Ten Plays of London’s Grand Guignol
Eight O’Clock by Reginald Berkeley
A Man in Mary’s Room by Gladys Unger
Private Room Number 6 by André de Lorde
The Person Unknownby H. F. Maltby
Latitude 15°Southby Victor Mac Clure
The Old Women by Christopher Holland
The Nutcracker Suite by Eliot Crawshay-Williams
The Sisters’ Tragedy by Richard Hughes
The Better Half by Noël Coward
I Want To Go Home by H. F. Maltby
APPENDICES
Appendix 1 London’s Grand Guignol, 1920-22Appendix 2 The Complete Repertoire of London’s Grand Guignol, 1920-22
Appendix 3 Extract from Oh, Hell!!! A ‘Revuette’ by Reginald Arkell and Russell Thorndike
Bibliography
About the author
Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama at Loughborough University. He was previously Professor of Drama and Dean of the School of Media and Performance at University College Falmouth and prior to that was Head of Research at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan and Co-Director (with Hamish Fyfe) of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling.His main research interests lie in the field of popular and vernacular performance and he has published extensively on Storytelling, Grand-Guignol and Brecht and his collaborators. In particular, his work on storytelling has led him to work on the interface between storytelling and digital technology and the way in which the internet has enabled the telling and sharing of ‘extraordinary’ stories of the everyday experiences of people.Together with Richard Hand he has delivered workshops on Grand Guignol, and presented Grand Guignol performances at universities, international conferences and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Richard and Michael are the authors of Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (2002), London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (2007) and Performing Grand-Guignol – Playing the Theatre of Horror (2016), all published by UEP.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
21,120 Ebooks in this category
