Hilda Trevelyan and Pauline Chase in a revival of J.M. Barrie’s fairy play, Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 16 December 1907

Hilda Trevelyan as Wendy and Pauline Chase as Peter in J.M. Barrie’s fairy play, Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, revived at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 16 December 1907
(photo: Bassano, London, 1907)

‘The Christmas season in the playhouse has begun thus early, for the Duke of York’s has reopened for the fourth year in succession with Peter Pan, Miss Pauline Chase reappearing as Peter and Miss [Hilda] Trevelyan as Wendy. I know of no type of entertainment with the exception of the Savoy operas that has created such a cult as Peter Pan, and like those delightful entertainments it has introduced the playhouse in quarters where it was never heard of before. Peter Pan parties are likely to be the vogue of the day as they were last season, and there will probably be a new outburst of Peter Pan literature of various kinds.’
(J.M. Bulloch, The Sphere, London, Saturday, 21 December 1907, p.238a)

‘The vogue of Peter Pan is really extraordinary. The first night it was produced on this its fourth-year season it was received with almost hysterical enthusiasm by a house which knew every line of the script and every turn of stage management. Every new “line,” every new bit of business, came as a delightful surprise, and the entertainment was sent off with a welcome as hearty as the cheers which have just made Tetrazzini a lion elsewhere.
‘The other theatre entertainments for children – Alice in Wonderland not excepted – have never attracted such a huge audience as Peter Pan. This is rather astonishing, for unlike Alice it has curiously grown-up elements in it which deserve the attention of some serious student of psychology although nobody has treated it in that light. Yet I believe it is just those elements – some of them like a sad, far-off voice – that attract grown-ups, and it is just these moments which Miss Pauline Chase with all her charm does not capture. Thus, for example, when standing on the rock amid the rising seas, she exclaims “To die would be a great adventure,” she says it as a child from a copybook not as one who feels it – as Melisande would have felt it.
‘Miss [Nina] Boucicault [in the first production of Peter Pan, Duke of York’s, London, 27 December 1904] with her fine wistfulness is the true Peter, but on the first night her place was the stalls and not the stage. In all the lighter moments Miss Chase is very bright and pretty, leaving the pathos to Miss Trevelyan, a far more experienced actress, whose Wendy has lost none of its delicacy. Mr. Robb Harwood, replacing Mr. [Gerald] Du Maurier, is excellent as the Pirate Hook, and Miss [Sybil] Carlisle resumes her part of Mrs. Darling to the excellent inconsequence of Mr. A.E. Matthews as the father of the children. The mounting is just as ingenious as ever, showing an extraordinary appreciation of the child’s desire to see the inside of things.
‘The entertainment has, as I suggested last week, duly produced its own literature, for Mr. John Hassall has issued a series of six long panels illustrating Mr. Barrie’s charming story. The pictures, which are issued by Lawrence and Jellicoe at 2s. each (unframed), are beautifully reproduced in colour and form ideal decorations for a nursery.’
(J.M. Bulloch, The Sphere, London, Saturday, 28 December 1907, p.264a)

Advertisement

Kate Cutler in A Model Trilby, 1895

Kate Cutler (1864-1955), English actress, as she appeared in the title role of the burlesque, A Model Trilby; or, A Day or Two After Du Maurier, which opened at the Opera Comique, London, 16 November 1895. Trilby, the play, with Dorothea Baird in the title role, had opened at the Haymarket Theatre, London, on 30 October 1895.
(photo: unknown, probably London, 1895; Ogden’s Guinea Gold cigarette card issued about 1900)

‘Miss Nellie Farren has fixed the date of the reopening of the Opera Comique with A Model Trilby; or, A Day or Two After Du Maurier, for the 16th [November 1895]. The burlesqued Trilby will be represented by clever Miss Kate Cutler, and Mr Tree’s Svengali will be travestied by Mr Robb Harwood… . The interior [of the Opera Comique] has been greatly altered; new stalls, dress circle, and upper boxes have been added, and a new and spacious pit has been provided; so that Miss Farren’s enterprise will have a fair start, so far as the house in which it is made is concerned.’
(The Era, London, Saturday, 2 November 1895, p. 10a)

‘Messrs Yardley and Brookfield’s burlesque The Model Trilby had a trial trip on Monday afternoon at the Kilburn Theatre. Miss Kate Cutler was demurely droll as Trilby, and Mr Robb Harwood imitated cleverly the appearance, voice, and manner of Mr Beerbohm Tree as Svengali. Miss Cutler’s song ”The Altogether” seems decidedly smart; and we await with agreeable anticipation the production of the ”skit” at the Opera Comique on Saturday next.’
(The Era, London, Saturday, 9 November 1895, p. 12b)

A MODEL TRILBY, AT THE OPERA COMIQUE.
‘The trilby jokes date back to the fifties, Taffy in the burlesque says in apology. It may be out of regard to the unities that Miss Farren has gone to the same period for the ”new and original comedy” which precedes A Model Trilby at the Opera Comique. Nannie is a good half-century belated. With its naïve sentiment, its old-fashioned seducer, its painstaking dialect, it might perhaps have brought tears to the eyes of the Amelias of a more susceptible generation. But the early Victorian revival could not make this sort of primitive pathos and humour again the fashion, and in the face of it a modern audience yawns politely from the stalls, laughs uproariously from the gallery. Or, it may be that there is wisdom in the choice. After so tame a performance, the weakest attempt at burlesque could not by seen gay.
‘The Model Trilby of Mr. C.H. Brookfield and Mr. W. Yardly, is, however, something more than an attempt, and would, in parts, amuse under any circumstances. Trilby, the book, it must be confessed, adapts itself to parody with unusual facilities. Indeed, with us it is a question whether the play at the Haymarket belongs, strictly speaking, to burlesque or to melodrama. The Haymarket Taffy, with his pepper-pot and dumb-bells, the Haymarket Mrs. Bagot with her unreserved confidences to a chance concierge, the Haymarket Mr. Bagot, modelled upon Mr. Blakeley in his familiar rôles, are really conceived in as farcical spirit as the same characters at the Opera Comique, and are, if anything, the funnier because of the seriousness with which they are played. And if the magnificent proportions of Trilby herself have grown less at the Opera Comique – because the part has been so much cut down, Durien, the artist-author explains – at least the lady has an ankle to account for her speciality as a model. In the Haymarket, too, the success, in large measure, depends upon make-up; the characters are received with applause in proportion as they look like Mr. Du Maurier’s drawings. But the trick is an easy one, and on the stage of the Opera Comique, Svengali and Taffy and the Laird and Trilby all reappear with a genuinely comic excellence of imitation. In the case of Svengali, Mr. Robb Harwood and Mr. Tree might change places, and the two audiences be none the wiser. The burlesque takes all the usual indispensable liberties with the play and the novel. The whole story is turned topsy-turvy. Little Billie weeps unrestrainedly because he is counted too young to see Trilby pose in the ”altogether”; Trilby’s voice is ruined by Svengali in the training, and so on. But, after all, plot in burlesque matters little. The great thing is the way it is written and played. Mr. Brookfield and Mr. Yardley, in the beginning at least, are not wanting in wit and gaiety. They have seized upon the real weakness of Trilby, and got all the fun out of it they can; to provide harmless, Bowdlerized indecency for the middle classes; that is the little game of Durien, their artist-author, ”the present scribe,” who is perpetually appealed to by his puppets to set them straight. But. Apparently, the material, made to their hand as it might be, could not hold out for an hour or more. The second half of the performance, ending in an indifferent variety entertainment, drags and is as dull as the first half is light and gay and spontaneous. And here the trouble must rest with the authors; for, to the end, the actors do their very best. The whole thing is carried through with plenty of ”go” and life and vivacity. Mr. Eric Lewis, as Durien, may show unexpected restraint in his get up, but he plays with spirit, and his song and dance with Mdme. Vinard is one of the best things in the whole burlesque. Miss Kate Cutler does not bother to study the Haymarket Trilby, except to borrow a hint for her first costume, and, perhaps, this is just as well. Mr. Farren Soutar and Mr [C.P.] Little and Mr. [George] Antley make the Taffy and Laird and Little Billie of the play seem by comparison more tedious than ever, and before dullness sets in on their own stage they have one very jolly dance. We have already said that Mr. Harwood’s Svengali is a capital piece of mimicry. The music has the appropriate gaiety, and there is a Trilby dance, which means, of course, bare, or rather stockinged, feet. And the chances are that in the course of time the last part will go at a more lively rate, and A Model Trilby will be as amusing a little skit, which is all it pretends to be, as you could have.
‘But on Saturday, perhaps, the prettiest bit of comedy of the evening was given by Miss Nellie Farren in the little speech to her ”boys and girls,” a lump in her ”froat,” ready for the good cry all ”females” must have at such a critical moment. Miss Farren the manager has not forgotten Miss Farren the actress.’
(The Pall Mall Gazette, London, Monday, 18 November 1895, p. 3b)

Evie Greene

Evie Greene (1876-1917),
English actress and singer,
as principal boy in the pantomime
Babes in the Wood and Robin Hood,
produced at the Tyne Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Christmas, 1897
(photo: unknown, 1897/98)

This real photograph cigarette card of Evie Greene as principal boy in the Christmas 1897 pantomime Babes in the Wood and Robin Hood, produced at the Tyne Theatre, Newcastle-on-Tyne, was issued about 1900 in England in one of Ogden’s Guinea Gold series. Other members of the cast included Maggie Duggan, Marie Yorke, May Marton, Nellie Christie, Lulu and Valli Valli, Robb Harwood, Harry Elliston, Harry Lupino, Charles Cassie (eccentric doll dance), Volti and Ray (bar act) and the Harlow Brothers (The Newcastle Weekly Courant, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Saturday, 1 January 1898, p. 1b)