The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

Author: Barbara Cartland

Publisher: M-y books ltd

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 1782130632

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Katie King is a girl with big dreams for the future! A dancer in the heart of London's theatre land, Katie is awaiting her big break, when her name will finally be in lights above the Gaiety Theatre. Fun-loving, cute and adoring of her charming boyfriend, the enigmatic Harry Carrington, Katie is sure that her unusual crowning glory of wild auburn curls will help catapult her out of the chorus line and into the leading roles she deserves. But Katie's dazzling smile masks a tragedy - she is desperately ill and her enforced absence from the stage means that she does not have the money for the private healthcare she so badly needs. A few streets away, illness has touched the life of another young woman with distinctive Titian hair, Larentia. She is nursing her sick father, the eminent historian Professor Braintree, and suffers similar horrors when he is diagnosed as incurable. Whilst brilliant and an expert in his field, the Professor's books gain him respect, not money and they too cannot afford the surgery needed. At first it seems that the only two things that the girls have in common are their astoundingly beautiful hair and a desperate need for money to employ the services of the pioneering surgeon Mr. Curtis Sheldon. However, the sudden death of the 4th Duke of Tregaron, a cad of the first order, whose unwanted attentions and lewd behaviour caused a naive Katie such pain in her first year in London, results in Harry coming up with a daring plan to capitalise on their short lived relationship. If Larentia agrees to play her part, and the new Duke, Justin Garon, believes their story there is just a chance that they can raise enough money to save both Katie and the Professor. But can an innocent young woman, with no experience of the darker side of life, be able to trick everyone? And what will be the ultimate cost of the deception if she fails? For this final curtain call Katie must sit back stage as Larentia prepares to give the performance of a lifetime.


Musical Comedy in America

Musical Comedy in America

Author: Cecil Michener Smith

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780878305643

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First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Acts of Desire

Acts of Desire

Author: Sos Eltis

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0199691355

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Acts of Desire is a study of theatrical depictions of illicit female sexuality, from seduction and prostitution to bigamy and adultery, from the beginning of the nineteenth century through to the 1930s.


The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins

The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins

Author: William M. Clarke

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee

Published: 2004-10-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1461730317

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In this intimate Victorian life of the father of the detective story, Mr. Clarke uncovers and explores, with insight and sympathy, the private relationships of a fascinating writer. A literary coup...casts a fresh beam of light on the great, dark seam of Victorian sexual mores. —Observer


Musical Theatre Histories

Musical Theatre Histories

Author: Millie Taylor

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-10-20

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350293776

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Musical theatre is often perceived as either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative, however, depicts the musical as neither American nor British, but both and more, having grown out of frequent and substantial interactions between both centres (and beyond). Through multiple thematic 'histories', Millie Taylor and Adam Rush take readers on a series of journeys that include the art form's European and American origins, African American influences, negotiations arounddiversity, national identity, and the globalisation of the form, as well as revival culture, censorship and the place of social media in the 21st century. Each chapter includes case studies and key concept boxes to identify, explain and contextualise important discussions, offering an accessible study of a dynamic and ever evolving medium. Written and developed for undergraduate students, this introductory textbook provides a newly focused and alternative way of understanding musical theatre history.


Pick a Pocket Or Two

Pick a Pocket Or Two

Author: Ethan Mordden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-08-02

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190877979

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From Gilbert and Sullivan to Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Julie Andrews to Hugh Jackman, from Half a Sixpence to Matilda, Pick a Pocket Or Two is the story of the British musical: where it began and how it developed. In Pick a Pocket Or Two, acclaimed author Ethan Mordden brings his wit and wisdom to bear in telling the full history of the British musical, from The Beggar's Opera (1728) to the present, with an interest in isolating the unique qualities of the form and its influence on the American model. To place a very broad generalization, the American musical is regarded as largely about ambition fulfilled, whereas the British musical is about social order. Oklahoma!'s Curly wins the heart of the farmer Laurey--or, in other words, the cowboy becomes a landowner, establishing a truce between the freelancers on horseback and the ruling class. Half a Sixpence, on the other hand, finds a working-class boy coming into a fortune and losing it to fancy Dans, whereupon he is reunited with his working-class sweetheart, his modest place in the social order affirmed. Anecdotal and evincing a strong point of view, the book covers not only the shows and their authors but the personalities as well--W. S. Gilbert trying out his stagings on a toy theatre, Ivor Novello going to jail for abusing wartime gas rationing during World War II, fabled producer C. B. Cochran coming to a most shocking demise for a man whose very name meant "classy, carefree entertainment." Unabashedly opinionated and an excellent stylist, author Ethan Mordden provokes as much as he pleases. Mordden is the preeminent historian of the form, and his book will be required reading for readers of all walks, from the most casual of musical theater goers to musical theater buffs to students and scholars of the form.


Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939

Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939

Author: Ben Macpherson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1137598077

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This book examines the performance of ‘Britishness’ on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of ‘Britishness’, and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of ‘Britishness’, reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline.