Sadler's Wells Theatre Archive

Let's Twist Again!

Blog readers may recall my  December 2011 post  - Christmas with a Twist - that highlighted one of the treasures held in the Sadler's Wells Theatre Archive, namely a play-script of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist performed at the Wells in December 1838.

I am delighted and excited to announce that, for the first time in over 170 years,  the play using the original script is being performed at Finsbury Library on Thursday 26 April (details below).  To commemorate the bicentenary of the great novelist's birth, and as part of the Cityread London initiative celebrating Oliver Twist, the play is being staged by the Wadham Players in association with Islington Library and Heritage Services. This is truly bringing the past alive!

Admission: £5 on door
Time: 7pm
Date: Thursday 26 April 2012
Location: Finsbury Library, 245 St John Street, London EC1V 4NB 

We are expecting a large audience, so be sure to arrive early. Also take advantage of visiting A Twist in the Tale: Charles Dickens in Islington, a display exploring Dickens's connections to the area at Islington Local History Centre, Finsbury Library (until 31 May 2012). The original play-script is on show as part of the display.

Below: Page taken from Oliver Twist, as first performed at Sadler's Wells in 1838
and again at Finsbury Library in April 2012, some 170 years later!

 

The first theatre: the original “musick house”

On beginning to catalogue the Sadler’s Wells archive, I decided that it would be a good idea to discover what each of the six theatres was like and learn about the highs and lows of almost 330 years of theatre history.

The first theatre to occupy the Sadler’s Wells site was a wooden building known as the “musick house”. It was opened by a Mr Sadler in 1683 and is London’s second oldest existing theatre after the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which opened in 1663.

This is an illustration of the theatre taken from the collection, dated 1730 (click to enlarge):

 
Shortly after opening, an ancient well was discovered in the grounds, leading to the name Sadler’s Wells. Sadler quickly used this as an opportunity to promote the “musick house” and make money. He claimed that the healing qualities of the well water could cure ailments from dropsy to ulcers. While visitors took the waters, they were entertained by musicians playing in the grounds and Sadler’s Wells became a fashionable spa resort.

Rival wells soon opened in the surrounding area and Sadler’s Wells eventually became a less popular attraction. Alcohol and entertainment became the main attractions of the site and, as the Theatres Royal were the only venues permitted by Charles II to stage serious drama, Sadler’s Wells relied on light entertainment and novelty acts.

Papers in the collection reveal that pantomimes were performed at Sadler’s Wells from at least 1737, when ‘The Adventures of Harlequin in China’ entertained audiences. In 1740, the entertainment provided at Sadler’s Wells included ‘rope dancing, tumbling, singing, and several new grand dances both serious and comic’.

Sadler’s Wells gained an increasingly poor reputation. A newspaper cutting reveals that in 1744, it appeared on a list of places that were ‘riotous, of great extravagance, luxury, idleness, and ill fame’. The theatre was further described as attracting ‘great numbers of loose, disorderly, idle people’.

This all changed when, in 1746, Thomas Rosoman became manager. He was the man who would oversee the building of the second theatre and a change in fortune. We’ll be looking at Rosoman’s theatre in a future blog post.