Early Stages: Theatre in Ontario 1800-1914

Abstract

Early Stages, the eighth theme study in The Ontario Historical Studies Series, explores in six thoughtful essays the evolution of Ontario theatre from 1800 to 1914. Historian J.M.S. Careless sets the stage with a background study titled “The Cultural Setting: Ontario Society to 1914”, in which he analyses the role played by “the growth of settlement, the rise of towns and cities, constant improvements in communications by land and water, and the sweep of technological advance”, all of which created the conditions which made theatrical activity viable. Leslie O’Dell chronicles the activities of the regimental theatrical troupes which, between 1815 and 1870, provided the garrison towns of Kingston, London, and Toronto with a major source of entertainment. Robertson Davies surveys the theatrical menu offered audiences, reminding us that “the hopes and the fears and the unfocused terrors of our forebears show through the lace curtains of their plays as they do not always show through their novels or their poetry”. In upholstered productions of Shakespeare, costume dramas, melodramas, comedies old and new, farces, and operas grand, light, and bouffe, Ontario entertainment proclaimed at once its bourgeois prejudices and its kinship with the age. The bulk of theatrical performances were provided by touring companies, and Mary M. Brown casts a knowledgeable eye over the circuits, proprietors of local theatres, itinerant actor-managers, and the stars, native and foreign, who were at the heart of the system. Gerald Lenton-Young, in a remarkably well-researched and informative piece, ventures into the neglected field of variety, which, in the early decades of this century, serviced in Toronto an audience five times larger than that of the legitimate theatre (183,000 weekly capacity as compared with the legitimate theatre’s 35,000). His account of the puppet shows, panoramas, menageries and circuses, minstrel acts, dime museums, burlesque and, latterly, vaudeville extravaganzas offers a welcome antidote to the pervasive overemphasis by historians on Canada’s legitimate theatre. The volume’s final study, Robert Fairfield’s record of Ontario’s major theatres and performance halls over a 140-year period, is statistically satisfying, yet wonderfully readable. We come away with a solid sense of construction costs, architectural styles, the size and seating arrangements of auditoria, the depth, breadth, and height of stage areas. Even sanitary facilities (or, more often, the lack of them) are not overlooked.

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