Augustus Harris was famous for his elaborate and spectacular
pantomimes staged at Drury
Lane in the 1880s and 1890s. His productions cost vast
sums of money, had hundreds of performers, and lasted for
up to five hours. Many of the elements of today's pantomimes
can be traced back to Harris's Drury Lane pantomimes. Harris
was born in 1852, and was the son of a theatre manager. He
took over the management of Drury Lane in the 1880s.
Sleeping Beauty and The Beast Poster
The Forty Thieves
The Forty Thieves which opened on 27th December
1886 began at 7.30p.m. and ended at 1a.m. There were 500 people
on stage and two enormous processions. In Scene Five each
of the Forty Thieves had his own band of followers. It took
over forty minutes for them all to march out from a cave at
the back of the stage.
The Forty Thieves
Use the links below to listen to parts of a review of the
opening night of The Forty Thieves which appeared in the Lady's
Pictorial Newspaper on January 1, 1887.
The cost of Harris's productions was vast; he regularly spent
eight to ten thousand pounds on a show. The Forty Thieves
cost £65,000 to stage (the equivalent of £3½
million in 2002). His pantomimes were always a sell-out and
the theatre made huge profits.
Music Hall Stars in Pantomime
Harris was the first manager to bring in the star performers
from the music halls to play the Principal
Boy and Dame
roles. Some declared that music hall was a vulgar influence
on the theatre and objected. In 1885 the pantomime writer,
Edward Blanchard declared:
'My smooth and pointed lines are turned into ragged prose
and arrant nonsense. Hardly anything done as I intended or
spoken as I had written; the music hall element is crushing
the rest and the good old fairy tales never to be again illustrated
as they should be.'
Nicholls and Campbell as the Babes in the Wood
Indeed music hall artists would stop the action of the show
to perform their specialist turn: playing a saxophone, dancing
the can-can or singing their well known song. However the
popularity of the Music Hall stars outweighed the complaints
of the moral minority and Harris's pantomimes were extremely
successful.
Introduction
