Theatrical Excess

The Edwardian era was a time of decadent indulgence and elegant glamour, and a period in which a night at the theatre became the social axis for the fashionable set.

When Edward VII ascended the British throne in 1901 a new century had already begun under the old monarch, his mother, Queen Victoria. But it was Edward who represented the spirit of the new era and its energy. It was an era in which the pace of life was quickening, though at a leisurely rate, and an age in which the Great British Empire brought with it a sense of prosperity, power, and privilege.

The Edwardian age was not merely the years between 1901 and 1910, when Edward VII reigned. Rather it embraced the last two or more decades of the 19th century and extended to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was a period which began with Lottie Collins belting out 'Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay' from the Tivoli Music Hall and one which would close with homesick British soldiers singing 'Keep the home fires burning' from the trenches of France. In between these two songs passed a period of outrageous luxury, innovation and industry, flamboyant living and glamorous style. It was an age that encouraged a decadent indulgence in all forms of entertainment from horse-racing to yachting.

Pleasure-loving Edwardians, like their monarch, were avid play-goers. More than an evening's amusement, going to the theatre was a social event designed to display the elegance of the fashionable set. Offering a wealth of diverse entertainment, the theatre of the period attempted to either confront or escape the hard issues of the era. While Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband played at the Haymarket, George Edwardes' Gaiety Girls chorused tuneful songs with cheerful sentiments, and Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler brought avant-garde theatre to the Court.

Theatre, like the Empire, was changing and traditional forms of theatre and the burgeoning modern drama found themselves co-existing on the London stage. Spectacular melodrama ran alongside musical comedy, social comedies played beside sporting dramas. Cast sizes ranged from as little as three actors, for a realist play, to triple figures for a Drury Lane "autumn drama". It was the age of the actor-manager, when the business of the theatre was becoming increasingly respected and the profession of actor/actress moved up the social hierarchy from the depths to which it had been condemned.

Actresses, in particular Gaiety Girls, would go on to marry peers or men with honorary titles, and in 1895 Henry Irving would become the first actor to be awarded a knighthood. It was a time which would also see the theatre shift from being the central mode of popular entertainment to taking a back seat to the cinema. In 1890 music halls were flourishing but by 1910, and the first appearance of Charlie Chaplin, they were being converted into cinemas. But before the audience was captivated by the iconic silhouette of Chaplin's suited tramp another silhouette would enthral them: the hourglass outline of the corseted female body.

While the female form had long been an offstage object of man's desire she had, since the 1890s, increasingly become the onstage object of the male gaze; from Dorothea Baird's bare feet and naked ankles in Trilby to the bare shoulders and raised dancing skirts of George Edwardes' Gaiety Girls.

While an actress's semi-nakedness drew the attention of men, it was her clothing that fascinated the female members of the audience. More than just a sexualised figure for the visual consumption of men, the actress became a living, moving mannequin. Fashionable and elegant, she was clothed in the latest styles and her elaborate dresses, extravagant hats and sophisticated hairstyles made her the object of desire, worship and aspiration - for men and women.

The stage had been transformed into a catwalk which offered fashion inspiration and direction from behind the footlights. The actress not only modelled fashion but she influenced it from the size of her hat to the drop of her hemline. She set the trend for what was in vogue. Whether cast as a wronged woman, fallen heroine, a woman with a past or a 'new woman' (one who wanted the right to vote, to work and to wear trousers!), the costume was not only part of the play but also part of the wider issues that the theatre was engaging with, namely society's struggle with the 'woman question'.

In the 1903 production of The Orchid (the gala premiere of which was attended by both King Edward and Queen Alexandra) Edwardes' Gaiety Girls were glamorously dressed in clothes which deliberately emphasised their hourglass figures, from their slender shoulders to their tiny wasp waists and rounded hips to slim ankles. They were the perceived epitome of femininity whereas, in contrast, the 'new woman' (as in Arthur Wing Pinero's play The Amazons) was perceived to be a corset-free, trouser-wearing tomboy-style figure who was soon parodied by comedians of the day as a panto-esque, tweed-clad, spinster Dame.

Whether handled seriously or with humour, the concern regarding the 'woman question' in Edwardian theatre demonstrates how closely intertwined theatre, fashion and society were and indeed continue to be. Just as we might pick up a contemporary fashion magazine to flick through and see adverts for celebrity- endorsed brands and products, so too would the Edwardian reader have leafed through the pages of The Play Pictorial to see Miss Jessie Bateman advertising the skin enhancing properties of Helena Rubenstein, or Lewis Waller praising the speed and design of his new Daimler motor car. Attitudes might have changed, as well as fortunes for the theatre, but perhaps we are not so unlike Edwardian readers after all.