British Theatre Between the Wars, 1918 1939

This volume initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth-century British theatre cultures. Combining the popular with the commercial, it includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare.

Histories of British theatre between 1918 and 1939 have tended to marginalize the commercial and mainstream in favour of the literary or the politically motivated. This volume brings together a collection of essays that reflect both a far more complex theatre world than this strategy has allowed for, and scholarship on mainstream and alternative theatres in the 1920s and 1930s. Combining the popular with the commercial, the book includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare. With assessments of the representation of gender and sexuality in the theatre, this volume not only unveils hitherto neglected theatre practices but also places them in the context of a society undergoing rapid social and cultural change. It will appeal to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates and scholars interested in twentieth-century British theatre.