The V&A's Theatre and Performance collections chart the history of Music Hall and Variety Theatre. From early song and supper rooms to West End music halls, the birth of the Royal Variety Performance and the rise of Revue in the 20th century.
The Story of Music Hall
Music halls can be traced back to the taverns and coffee houses of 18th century London where men met to eat, drink and do business.
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Music Hall Character Acts
Although songs were central to the performance in early music halls, entertainment soon developed to incude lions comiques, male and female impersonators and speciality act…
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Walter Sickert and the Bedford Music Hall
Walter Sickert (1860-1942), was a painter and printmaker who immersed himself in the world of the halls in his desire to capture modern life. For Sickert the music halls we…
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Variety Theatre
In the early 20th century, new purpose-built theatres, many designed by Frank Matcham, sprang up across Britain. These were the Empires, Palaces and Hippodromes, beautiful …
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Theatrical Revue
Revue developed in the 1890s and was a collection of short sketches, songs, dances, comic interludes and even short plays. It differed from variety in that the acts were li…
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Sheet Music Covers
The earliest music sheets to be illustrated by lithography were produced in this country in about 1820 and were coloured by hand. After colour lithography took off in the l…
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A gift in your will
You may not have thought of including a gift to a museum in your will, but the V&A is a charity and legacies form an important source of funding for our work. It is not just the great collectors and the wealthy who leave legacies to the V&A. Legacies of all sizes, large and small, make a real difference to what we can do and your support can help ensure that future generations enjoy the V&A as much as you have.
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Grace, Beauty and Banjos: Peculiar Lives and Strange Times of Music Hall and Variety Artistes (Paperback)
This valuable and wonderfully amusing record of popular entertainment, written by the musical hall expert and performer Michael Kilgarriff, includes w…
Buy nowEvent - Haberdashers' Hall
Mon 08 July 2013 14:00
Designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners, the Haberdashers’ 4th Livery Hall was officially opened in October 2002 by the Queen.
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