page_title: Wybert Reeve
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wybert Reeve / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Wybert Reeve c. 1880
context_page_description: Wybert Reeve was an English actor and impresario, important in the history of the theatre in South Australia.
context_section_description: Reeve was born in London, the only child of well-to-do parents who died when he was around five years of age, and he was placed under the guardianship of a grandfather, who appears to have been a bit of a tyrant. In this household was an old and trusted servant, who took the boy to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Adelphi and other London theatres, where he saw William Macready in The Tempest and the Guy Fawkes pantomime, to name two performances he recalled many years later.
  Around the age of 11 or 12, Reeve took to sneaking out of the house by the servants' entrance in order to witness stage productions. On one occasion he was discovered by a servant, but his intransigence was not reported to grandfather. In fact there appears to have been no love lost between Reeve and any of his family, save only an uncle, a parson of Bristol. 
  As a young man, Reeve joined in amateur performances at the homes of friends, and thereby got to meet a son of Sir Edwin Landseer and the daughters of one Cooper, a Royal Academician, (perhaps Richard Cooper, Jr?).
  At age 17 a commission in either the 3rd Dragoon Guards or the 5th Dragoon Guards was procured for him, and he was stationed at the Piershill Barracks, but the regimented life of a soldier was not for him, and he resigned a year later to become an actor. The relatives were furious at his ingratitude and, apart from the vicar mentioned, broke off all contact and never saw him again. He joined a professional company under the usual conditions for an aspiring actor in those days — no pay and provide your own wardrobe — and was given bit parts.
  While staying at Bradford, where he had his first engagement, he met the actors James Anderson and Mrs. Warner, who were at the same hotel. The great tragedian earnestly advised him to abandon all thoughts of the stage; advice ignored of course. Shortly afterwards Reeve was given the part of "Frederick", the walking gentleman in The Wonder, a comedy by Susanna Centlivre. Reeve unfortunately forgot his lines, and thenceforth was reduced to walk-on non-speaking parts, with no prospect of advancement, so the  aspiring "Hamlet" and "Young Norval" left and found another manager, in  Whitehaven, Cumberland, under the same terms — nothing a week and find your own wardrobe.
  Undeterred, Reeve continued to pursue his ambition, and steadily worked his way up the ladder.
  In 1852, in Plymouth, as the outcome of a bet, Reeve wrote a farce, An Australian Hoax which, to win the wager, he had in production within a week and on the stage in ten days. Gold discoveries in Australia were making the news at the time, but it is a curious fact that within a few years he would be there making his fortune, but on the stage. He wrote another farce, Supper Gratis in 1855. In that year he joined the Bath and Bristol Company, then the Theatre Royal Company at Manchester in 1857, and played four successive seasons with them.
  After five years of touring he decided to try his hand at stage management, and successively mounted productions at Cardiff, Swansea, Ryde, Sheffield, South Shields, and Scarborough in 1867,which he ran for two years.
  In October 1869 he made his first personal appearance on the London stage as "John Mildmay" in  Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep at the Lyceum Theatre, followed by "Count Fosco" in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (from the book of the same name) at the Olympic Theatre, the role for which he was best known.
  In 1873 he supported Collins on his reading tour of North America and appeared as Fosco on Broadway. He would eventually play the part in England, America, and the Colonies for over 2,000 nights.
  On 20 December 1875 Reeve opened the fine new Edinburgh Theatre on Castle Terrace, Edinburgh which he leased for two years. Productions there included grand operas with Her Majesty's Opera Company, and von Weber's Der Freischütz and other operas with the Carl Rosa Company, but was not a spectacular success, for which Reeve was blamed, and the theatre closed after eighteen months. The theatre, a venture of the Edinburgh Theatre, Winter Garden an
caption: Wybert Reeve c. 1880
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