Old Style Variety Returns to Ealing
For one night only Questors perform 'Red Peppers'
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The Questors Theatre is staging a performance of Noël Coward’s classic play Red Peppers which looks at the backstage life of the popular entertainers of the 1930s.
George and Lily Pepper are a second-rate husband-and-wife act who sing and dance, and tell tired old jokes. They travel from one town to another, performing the same routines, and bickering in the dressing room.
But they stick together because treading the boards is the only life they know.
The Questors Theatre’s production has been chosen to represent Great Britain at an international festival of amateur theatre in Monaco in August.
On July 23, there’s a one-off performance at the Mattock Lane theatre to raise money for the trip. The play is being staged as part of an old-style variety show that sets out to recreate the atmosphere of this once-popular form of entertainment.
In Edwardian times, Ealing was firmly established on the music hall circuit. The popular entertainers of the day played to packed houses twice a night.
(Drawing of Ealing Theatre reproduced by courtesy of arthurlloyd.co.uk)
The new ‘Ealing Theatre’ opened in 1899. The stage was one of the largest in London, and the auditorium could seat two thousand people.
The theatre was linked by a corridor to the adjacent Lyric Restaurant where patrons could enjoy fine dining in elegant surroundings. There was a ballroom large enough to hold orchestral concerts, along with a grill, a reading room and a billiards room.
(Photographs of Ealing Hippodrome courtesy of The Theatres Trust)
In 1906, the theatre was re-named the Ealing Hippodrome. A large sign on the facade promised ‘refined entertainments twice nightly’.
A poster from 1910 shows Marie Lloyd topping the bill. Her big hits included ‘The boy I love is up in the gallery’ and ‘A little bit of what you fancy does you good’. The innuendo of her material delighted her admirers, but offended polite society.
With the growing popularity of moving pictures, a cinematograph was installed to show films. The growing threat posed by the cinema is acknowledged by Lily in Red Peppers, when she asks George: “Who wants to see us for three bob when you can see Garbo for ninepence?”
Eventually the Hippodrome was converted into a full-time cinema, becoming known as the Palladium. It remained in business until 1958, when it was demolished to make way for shops. Part of the site in Ealing Broadway is now occupied by WHSmith.
By this time, the curtain was falling on variety. Most of the remaining theatres closed in the Fifties and Sixties as television became the nation’s favourite source of entertainment.
Performers like the Red Peppers may be long gone, but at least Noël Coward’s play allows us a glimpse of a lost world.
Peter Gould
18th July 2017
