West End and Friedrichstrasse - a comparative study of theatre in London and Berlin 1890-1930

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As recent research is making clear, music theatre was one of the most important popular cultures of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It represented a key stage in the modernization of the theatre and had a major impact on theatre aesthetics. In the case of revue, it produced challenging alternatives to the conservative progressivism of the 'book musical' by making claims for itself as a characteristically modern cultural form. It also engaged in complex ways with ideas about the modern world, registering and shaping contemporary attitudes to class, gender and national identities and articulating with mainstream political issues. Musical theatre was 'entertainment', but, far from being an innocent diversion, it was a key constituent of everyday modern culture. Focusing on musical comedy, revue and operetta, this interdisciplinary project uses unpublished play-text archives, as well as photographic and music archive, to study these social, cultural and political engagements across two important European sites of popular theatreBerlin andLondon, 1880-1939. The primary aim is to produce a comparative critical historiography of these late modern, industrially organized, entertainments.