Nuts and Wine
Encyclopedia
Nuts and Wine was a theatrical revue
, with lyrics by C. H. Bovill and P. G. Wodehouse
and music by Frank E. Tours, with additional numbers by Guy Jones and Melville Gideon
, from a book by Bovill and Wodehouse. It was performed at the Empire Theatre, London
, opening on 3 January 1914. The show closed on 28 March 1914, after a run of 12 weeks.
:
Scene 1 — New Eton
Scene 2 — New News
Scene 3 — New Mayflower
Scene 4 — New Ellis Island
Scene 5 — New Little Theatre
Scene 6 — New Empire Stores
Two other scenes—the New Clown and the New Idol—seem to have been dropped before the show opened.
Each scene provided a setting for a series of songs and dances, mostly satirising topics of the day, with frequent references to well-known personalities or topical events.
In the first scene, the playing fields of Eton have been turned into a market garden
, and the school curriculum has been reduced to just three subjects, music hall
, tango
(taught by music-hall star Gertie Millar
), and agriculture
.
The second scene is set in the offices of the New News, a newspaper that has absorbed The Times
and whose editor—one George L. Washington of Pittsburg, grandson of the famous president—prints the news first, then makes it happen. The newspaper's gossip columnist is Lady Teazle, actually one of the characters in Sheridan
's The School for Scandal
. This scene included a lengthy song poking fun at David Lloyd George
, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer
.
Scene 3 takes place on the New Mayflower, a yacht which is carrying passengers to New Ellis Island. Though the yacht catches fire and sinks, the next scene is still set in New Ellis Island, a newly-discovered country to which Britain has taken to banishing its bores and other inconvenient inhabitants.
The fifth scene is set in a music hall, the New Little Theatre, and features a play within a play supposedly written by the Vicar of Brixton, who watches from a box
in the company of Mr Punch, while world boxing champion Jack Johnson
shares another box with Rev F B Meyer
. The real vicar of Brixton, the Rev A J Waldron, had recently authored a "semi-morality play"., and Johnson, to the annoyance of many music-hall artistes, had been engaged to appear at a number of music halls. The play-with-a-play is performed by caricatures of well-known theatrical entertainers, including George Graves
, Edmund Payne
, Wilkie Bard
, and Mrs Patrick Campbell
.
The final scene is set in the New Empire Stores and is a parody of Within the Law, a play (adapted from that of Bayard Veiller
) which was then being performed at the Haymarket Theatre
. and which featured a department store, the Emporium. The scene also included a sketch parodying another popular play, the French farce Who's the Lady, by Jose Levy
, which had opened at the Garrick Theatre
in November 1913.
The Times
referred to "a number of clever artists for the most part making good fun out of material that was not very funny" and commented that "for lack of wit in the treatment, some of the best things miss fire", while the London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, in paragraph on the continuing craze for revues in England, dismissed it as "not a very brilliant specimen".
The Express described the first scene as "one of the best" and referred to "the final brilliance of the New Empire Stores", but considered the marionette show in the fifth scene to be "very clever, but over-long". In sharp contrast, The Observer
concluded: "Perhaps the most successful of all the scenes is the play at the New Little Theatre." But the Observers final summing-up matched that of the other reviews: "For the rest, there did not seem to us to be quite as much novelty about the revue as the titles of the scenes suggested."
Despite their reservations, most of the reviews noted that the show was "very heartily applauded at the close", which may explain why it was performed nightly for 12 weeks; and it seems that the run came to an end not because the show was unsuccessful but because the management of the Empire Theatre changed during March 1914 and the new management—Alfred Butt
and Charles B. Cochran
—wanted a change.
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
, with lyrics by C. H. Bovill and P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
and music by Frank E. Tours, with additional numbers by Guy Jones and Melville Gideon
Melville Gideon
Melville Gideon was an American composer, lyricist and performer of ragtime music, composing many themes for hit Broadway musicals including The Co-Optimists. He was also a director, producer and performer....
, from a book by Bovill and Wodehouse. It was performed at the Empire Theatre, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, opening on 3 January 1914. The show closed on 28 March 1914, after a run of 12 weeks.
Plot synopsis
The revue did not have a coherent plot, its six scenes being linked only by a surreal vision of an England changed beyond recognition and by the appearance in each scene of the character of Mr Punch, as compèreMaster of Ceremonies
A Master of Ceremonies , or compere, is the host of a staged event or similar performance.An MC usually presents performers, speaks to the audience, and generally keeps the event moving....
:
Scene 1 — New Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
Scene 2 — New News
Scene 3 — New Mayflower
Mayflower
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...
Scene 4 — New Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
Scene 5 — New Little Theatre
Little Theatre
The Little Theatre in Rochester, New York, commonly known as "The Little" is a movie theatre located on historic East Avenue in downtown Rochester, New York and a modest non-profit multiplex specializing in art film, including independent and foreign productions outside the United States.Founded in...
Scene 6 — New Empire Stores
Two other scenes—the New Clown and the New Idol—seem to have been dropped before the show opened.
Each scene provided a setting for a series of songs and dances, mostly satirising topics of the day, with frequent references to well-known personalities or topical events.
In the first scene, the playing fields of Eton have been turned into a market garden
Market garden
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. It is distinguishable from other types of farming by the diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically, from under one acre ...
, and the school curriculum has been reduced to just three subjects, music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
, tango
Argentine tango
Argentine tango is a musical genre of simple quadruple metre and binary musical form, and the social dance that accompanies it. Its lyrics and music are marked by nostalgia, expressed through melodic instruments including the bandoneon. Originated at the ending of the 19th century in the suburbs of...
(taught by music-hall star Gertie Millar
Gertie Millar
Gertrude "Gertie" Millar was one of the most famous English singer-actresses of the early 20th century, known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies....
), and agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
.
The second scene is set in the offices of the New News, a newspaper that has absorbed The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and whose editor—one George L. Washington of Pittsburg, grandson of the famous president—prints the news first, then makes it happen. The newspaper's gossip columnist is Lady Teazle, actually one of the characters in Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
's The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on May 8, 1777.The prologue, written by David Garrick, commends the play, its subject, and its author to the audience...
. This scene included a lengthy song poking fun at David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the title held by the British Cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters. Often simply called the Chancellor, the office-holder controls HM Treasury and plays a role akin to the posts of Minister of Finance or Secretary of the...
.
Scene 3 takes place on the New Mayflower, a yacht which is carrying passengers to New Ellis Island. Though the yacht catches fire and sinks, the next scene is still set in New Ellis Island, a newly-discovered country to which Britain has taken to banishing its bores and other inconvenient inhabitants.
The fifth scene is set in a music hall, the New Little Theatre, and features a play within a play supposedly written by the Vicar of Brixton, who watches from a box
Box (theatre)
In theater, a box is a small, separated seating area in the auditorium for a limited number of people.Boxes are typically placed immediately to the front, side and above the level of the stage. They are often separate rooms with an open viewing area which typically seat five people or fewer. ...
in the company of Mr Punch, while world boxing champion Jack Johnson
Jack Johnson (boxer)
John Arthur Johnson , nicknamed the “Galveston Giant,” was an American boxer. At the height of the Jim Crow era, Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion...
shares another box with Rev F B Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer
Frederick Brotherton Meyer , a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic...
. The real vicar of Brixton, the Rev A J Waldron, had recently authored a "semi-morality play"., and Johnson, to the annoyance of many music-hall artistes, had been engaged to appear at a number of music halls. The play-with-a-play is performed by caricatures of well-known theatrical entertainers, including George Graves
George Graves (actor)
George Windsor Graves was an English comic actor. Although he could neither sing nor dance, he became a leading comedian in musical comedies, adapting the French and Viennese opéra-bouffe style of light comic relief into a broader comedy popular with English audiences of the period...
, Edmund Payne
Edmund Payne
Edmund Payne , was an actor, comedian, singer and dramatist best known for his comic appearances in Edwardian Musical Comedy. His father was Edmund Payne, a master cabinet builder and his mother was Eliza Payne née Ince....
, Wilkie Bard
Wilkie Bard
Wilkie Bard was a popular vaudeville and music hall entertainer and recording artist at the beginning of the 20th century. He is best known for his songs "I Want to Sing in Opera" and "The Night Watchman." -Early life:Bard was born March 19, 1874 in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, Lancashire...
, and Mrs Patrick Campbell
Mrs Patrick Campbell
Mrs Patrick Campbell was a British stage actress.-Early life and marriages:Campbell was born Beatrice Stella Tanner in Kensington, London, to John Tanner and Maria Luigia Giovanna, daughter of Count Angelo Romanini...
.
The final scene is set in the New Empire Stores and is a parody of Within the Law, a play (adapted from that of Bayard Veiller
Bayard Veiller
Bayard Veiller was an American screenwriter, producer and film director. He wrote for 32 films between 1915 and 1941...
) which was then being performed at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
. and which featured a department store, the Emporium. The scene also included a sketch parodying another popular play, the French farce Who's the Lady, by Jose Levy
Jose Levy
Jose Levy was the theatre practitioner who attempted to import the ghoulish and grisly Grand Guignol aesthetic for London audiences.Levy was born in Portsmouth, England and educated at the Ecole de Commerce, Lausanne....
, which had opened at the Garrick Theatre
Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a...
in November 1913.
Performers
Among those appearing in the revue, the following were specifically mentioned in the reviews or advertisements:- Phyllis BedellsPhyllis BedellsPhyllis Bedells was an English ballerina and teacher. She studied with Bolm, Cecchetti, and Pavlova. From 1907 she was a dancer at the London Empire Theatre and became the first British prima ballerina there in 1914. She left in 1916 to dance in West End musical revues and in opera ballets at...
- R G Knowles
- Maidie Hope
- Fred Payne
- Nelson KeysNelson Keys-Selected filmography:* Mumsie * Madame Pompadour * The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel * Almost a Divorce * In the Soup * Wake Up Famous -External links:...
- Lauri Hunter
- Violet Lloyd
- Peggy Ross
- Dahlia Gordon
- Rose Hamilton
- Babette
- Albert Le Fre
- Julian Alfred
- Eric Thorne
- James Godden
- Dorothy Monkman
Critical reception
The revue had a mixed reception. The Daily Express noted that "half a dozen scintillating items ... in these days of much dulness is probably not a bad achievement", but remarked of the script by Bovill and Wodehouse that "it does little credit to their ingenuity". The Express reserved most praise for the dancing of Phyllis Bedells, who was "thunderously cheered" for what it described as "the one purely and delightfully artistic contribution of the whole entertainment".The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
referred to "a number of clever artists for the most part making good fun out of material that was not very funny" and commented that "for lack of wit in the treatment, some of the best things miss fire", while the London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, in paragraph on the continuing craze for revues in England, dismissed it as "not a very brilliant specimen".
The Express described the first scene as "one of the best" and referred to "the final brilliance of the New Empire Stores", but considered the marionette show in the fifth scene to be "very clever, but over-long". In sharp contrast, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
concluded: "Perhaps the most successful of all the scenes is the play at the New Little Theatre." But the Observers final summing-up matched that of the other reviews: "For the rest, there did not seem to us to be quite as much novelty about the revue as the titles of the scenes suggested."
Despite their reservations, most of the reviews noted that the show was "very heartily applauded at the close", which may explain why it was performed nightly for 12 weeks; and it seems that the run came to an end not because the show was unsuccessful but because the management of the Empire Theatre changed during March 1914 and the new management—Alfred Butt
Alfred Butt
Sir Alfred Butt, 1st Baronet was a British theatre entrepreneur, Conservative politician and racehorse owner and breeder...
and Charles B. Cochran
Charles B. Cochran
Sir Charles Blake Cochran , generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noel Coward and his works.-Biography:Cochran was born in Sussex and educated...
—wanted a change.