Romantic Stages: Set and Costume Design in Victorian England, and: Fun Without Vulgarity: Victorian and Edwardian Popular Entertainment Posters (review)

The most intriguing aspects of Alicia Finkel’s Romantic Stages are her depiction of shifting trends in theatrical productions and her chronicle of the emergence of the visual designer as a respected artist. She provides large and small details about late Victorian stage art, and introduces characters ranging from dress-boiling seamstresses to “archeologist” auteurs. The text is usefully illustrated with visual images of costumes and settings drawn from contemporary engravings, paintings, sketches, and photographs.

Finkel detects the first stirrings of a stage-design renaissance in 1767 when David Garrick hired French Academy member Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbough. De Loutherbough’s accurate renderings of natural scenes and famous landmarks were enhanced by dramatic lighting effects which simulated moonlight, cloud movement, and volcanic eruptions. Finkel also sees this period as significant in its enthusiasm for the visual recreation of images from the Romantic past. William Capon, chief scenic artist for Drury Lane from 1794 to 1813, was particularly lauded for his historically accurate depictions of medieval English architecture and interiors.

Under the management of Madame Vestris from 1847 to 1853, the Lyceum Theatre became known for romantic fantasy and spectacle. Playwright James Robinson Planche was hired by Vestris to insure that the Lyceum productions were chronologically correct, but he is best remembered for his lavish extravaganzas based on children’s stories featuring “whimsical but extremely polite”(16) fairies. Planche’s visions were realized by set designer William Roxbury Beverley, whose breathtaking sets earned him the soubriquet “the Watteau of Scene painters”(26).

Finkel’s next innovator is Charles Kean, the actor-manager of the Princess’s Theatre from 1850 to 1859, who was devoted to “massive historical reproduction”(31) on stage. Employing a team of scholars, antiquarians, and some of the most notable scenic artists of the period, Kean’s productions featured accurate settings and costumes integrated into dramatic crowd scenes, realistic battles, and, in one instance, the onstage sinking of a full-size ship.

Finkel devotes Chapter Four to the late-Victorian period’s “most influential figure in stage design,” Edward William Godwin (79). Godwin was a provincial critic known to “chastise theatrical managers for allowing a lack of accuracy and inconsistencies in scenery, property and costumes to debase their productions”(63). After he moved to London and began his affair with the actress Ellen Terry, Godwin became an “archaeologist” for a variety of productions (64). His most fruitful collaborations were with actor-manager Wilson Barrett, with whom he staged Hamlet in 1884 and a series of plays in classical settings. Godwin’s desire for “harmonious unity” (79) was repeatedly thwarted by vain actors, stubborn managers, and the unappreciative public. Although contemporary success eluded Godwin, Finkel celebrates his “pioneering theories on the unity of the stage picture”(79).

Chapter Five focuses on Henry Irving, actor-manager of the Lyceum from 1879 to 1916, whose productions featured spectacular, historically appropriate scenery and the dramatic use of supernatural effects. Irving had sets designed by Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema and executed by teams of painters directed by Hawes Craven. Finkel’s narrative concludes with Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s management of the Haymarket Theatre from 1887 to 1897 and Her/His Majesty’s Theatre from 1897 to 1915 where he employed many of the same designers and artists used by Irving to create productions of great pageantry and spectacle.

The final chapter of Romantic Stages is devoted to theatrical costume design during the late Victorian era. Since many designers created both costumes and sets, much of the text revisits material presented in previous pages. The excision of this information from the earlier, more tightly constructed chapters undercuts the text’s chronological progression, and makes it more difficult to discern...