page_title: John Hollingshead
section_title: The Gaiety Theatre
hierarchical_section_title: John Hollingshead / Life and career / Producer and theatre manager / The Gaiety Theatre
caption_attribution_description: Detail from "The Pantomimes" by D.H. Friston in the January 6, 1872 Illustrated London News, showing Thespis by Gilbert and Sullivan. The original has two other pantomimes stacked above it. It has been slightly cleaned up to isolate Thespis from the illustration of Noah's Ark above. The scene is from late in Act I, either just after the gods appear to Thespis (and before they chase the other Thespians off) in the dialogue before the finale, or at the return of the Thespians within the Act I finale. Given the lack of Diana, it's probably the former. Terence Rees, in Thespis: A Gilbert and Sullivan Enigma identifies the actors on page 99. From left to right: Apollo (Fred Sullivan), Mars (Frank Wood), Jupiter (John Maclean), Thespis (J. L. Toole), Stupidas [background, in pointy hat] (Fred Payne), Preposteros [arms crossed] (Harry Payne), and Mercury (Nelly Farren)
context_page_description: John Hollingshead was an English theatrical impresario, journalist and writer during the latter half of the 19th century. After a journalism career, Hollingshead managed the Alhambra Theatre and was later the first manager of the Gaiety Theatre, London. Hollingshead also wrote several books during his life.
  An innovative producer, Hollingshead brought Gilbert and Sullivan together in 1871 to produce their first joint work, a musical extravaganza called Thespis. Among other theatrical works that he produced, he mounted a long series of popular Victorian burlesques at the Gaiety, engaging Meyer Lutz to compose original scores for them. He also produced operettas, plays and other works. These productions made stars of Nellie Farren and several others. At the Gaiety, in 1878, Hollingshead was the first theatre manager to light his auditorium with electric lights.
context_section_description: In 1868, Hollingshead took over the Gaiety Theatre, which had been a large music hall. The auditorium was rebuilt and, under Hollingshead, it became a venue primarily for musical burlesque, variety, continental operetta, including several operettas by Jacques Offenbach, and light comedy, under Hollingshead's management, from 1868 to 1886.  The theatre opened on 21 December 1868, with the successful Robert the Devil, by W. S. Gilbert, a burlesque of the opera Robert le Diable. Gilbert also wrote An Old Score for the theatre in 1869.  Another early production was Alfred Thompson's Columbus!, or the Original Pitch in a Merry Key (1869). Nellie Farren starred in both Columbus and Robert the Devil.  She continued as "Principal Boy" at the Gaiety for the next 25 years, first under Hollingshead and then under George Edwardes.  Other Gaiety stalwarts were Edward Terry, Kate Vaughan and Fred Leslie.  The theatre's music director, Meyer Lutz, composed or arranged the music for many of its most successful burlesques.
  In 1870, Henry James Byron's Uncle Dick's Darling starred a young Henry Irving.  This was the last play that theatre buff Charles Dickens saw before his death.  Other pieces at Hollingshead's Gaiety in 1870 included Dot (Dion Boucicault's version of The Cricket on the Hearth); and The Princess of Trebizonde, based on the Jacques Offenbach operetta (1870).  Thespis, the first collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan, played at the theatre in 1871, with Farren as Mercury and J. L. Toole in the title role.  Offenbach's Les deux aveugles played in 1872, starring Fred Sullivan.  This was followed by such works as Shilly-Shally (1872) by Anthony Trollope and Charles Reade; Antony and Cleopatra (1873); and The Battle of Life, (based on Charles Dickens's Christmas story of that title).  Two other Dion Boucicault plays produced by Hollingshead's company in the early 1870s were Night and Morning and Led Astray.  Boucicault's Don Caesar de Bazan was travestied in Byron's Little Don Caesar de Bazan.
  In the late 1870s, the theatre became the first to install electric lighting on its auditorium. Hollingshead's productions there included The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Byron's farce Little Doctor Faust (1878) Byron's Handsome Hernani, or The Fatal Penny-Whistle (1879); and Robbing Roy (1879).  Meyer Lutz's Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves was performed in 1880 (Hollingshead had produced a highly successful charity production called The Forty Thieves at the Gaiety in 1878), and a burlesque of Aladdin, by Robert Reece, in 1881.  These were followed by Little Robin Hood (1882), a burlesque by Reece, Blue Beard (1882), Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand, based on The Tempest), Don Yuan, Byron's Little Don Caesar de Bazan (a send-up of Boucicault's play), Mazeppa (1884), Little Jack Sheppard (1885), Monte Cristo Jr. (1886), and dozens of others. John D'Auban choreographed the Gaiety burlesques from 1868. In addition to these burlesques, the theatre produced comedies such as Congreve's Love for Love, Vanbrugh's Relapse, The Grasshopper (1877, an adaptation by Hollingshead of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's La Cigale), and a number of farces.
  Nevertheless, burlesque and risque operettas were the normal fare at the Gaiety.  Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." In 1886, George Edwards took over the lease to the Gaiety.
caption: Illustration of Thespis, the first Gilbert and Sullivan work
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