The West End theatre between the wars was a strange mixture. The new
drama of Granville Barker at
the Royal Court and Savoy
theatres was considered a fringe
event and failed to become mainstream.
West End theatres were for the most part impoverished by the Depression
and remained conservative
both in the content of their
work and the staging.
Innovation and experimentation was restricted to the smaller club
theatres and new repertory
theatres which supported new writers and plays
from foreign writers
such as Ibsen and Chekhov.
Some interest in
this work began to
appear in the West End and one of most
popular of Shaw’s
plays was Saint Joan starring Sybil Thorndike
in 1924.
The plays of George Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham, Terence Rattigan, Noël Coward and J.B. Priestley, dominated the West End between the wars. Whilst Priestley and Shaw had a strong left wing agenda, the plays were essentially conservative in form.
Shakespeare’s plays virtually vanished from the West End. His home now was the Old Vic Theatre and the regional repertory theatres (including the Memorial Theatre
in Stratford-upon-Avon) which experimented with contemporary dress productions. It was John Gielgud who brought Shakespeare back to the West End in 1935 with his productions
of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and The Merchant of Venice.
Commercial theatre thrived and at Drury Lane large budget musicals by Ivor Novello and Noël Coward used
huge sets, extravagant costumes and large casts to create spectacular productions. The prolific Coward dominated the West End with his revues
and musicals, but he was also adept at serious drama. Coward’s Cavalcade was an epic play which traced the history of the early years of the 20th century through the lives of one family.
Coward remained one of the popular writers of this period with comedies such as The Vortex (1924), Fallen Angels (1925), and Present Laughter (1942).
Introduction
Granville Barker
