Theatrical Anecdotes

by Peter Hay

The tradition of telling theatrical anecdotes extends back in time almost as far as the theater itself. For much of its 2,500-year history, the stage has housed real characters and real stories as fascinating as any created by a dramatist. Ranging from the age of Aristophanes to the time
of Tennessee Williams, this book offers a motherlode of tales about backstage rivalries, thespian eccentricity, the parsimony of producers, and indignities suffered on tour.
We encounter Judith Anderson's unique method of working herself into a frenzy for her first entrance in Medea , deliberately provoking her co-star and arch-enemy, Florence Reed. We come across Oscar Wilde's own assessment of the first performance of Lady Windermere's Fan ("The play was a great
success, but the audience was a total failure"). And we learn of Shakespeare's wild oats and why Molière's grave had to be dug an extra four feet deep. These delightfully overflowing pages present David Garrick, Sarah Bernhardt, Noël Coward, Donald Wolfit, Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Helen
Hayes, and a cast of hundreds, along with directors, producers, critics, prompters, prop men, designers, and ghosts. Although the book brims with the glittering and the glamorous, Peter Hay does not neglect those legions of near-anonymous players and professionals, without whom the stars would not
be stars and the theater could not exist.
Organized by topic, this richly entertaining and wonderfully edifying volume contains hundreds of tips for all theatrical professionals, directs scholars and students to a wealth of historical sources, and treats all lovers of theater to a feast of backstage secrets that will permanently
enrich their appreciation of the art.

Genres: Theatre

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading this gem was an absolute delight! Having read it 30.5 years ago, I didn't have a lot of knowledge of theatrical history. Now I do, so a lot of the anecdotes in this book have a much deeper meaning with the full history behind them.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ideal book if you're interested in the theatre and like to read in ten minute bites. I probably read this one over a six month period, usually right before bed. Some of the anecdotes were more intriguing than others.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m being generous with stars here, because this is a type of book that is much better to flip through than to read from cover to cover. Some of the bits are hilarious, and memorable. Most are not.

[Mick Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

a hit and miss book,some more interesting than others.

[Jerry-Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14211351

[Mariana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was never going to appeal to a massive audience; only if you're in the theatre would most of these stories interest you, I think. Most of the anecdotes are about the way things work behind the scenes, whether it be about feuds between actors, fumbling your lines when you're on stage, what superstitions and rituals you have to go through before a performance or being afraid that pieces of the set may fall on your head. Unless you've been there, I highly doubt the vast majority of the stories related in this book would get even a chuckle out of you.
And even if you are in the theatre and understand and are interested in the crazy and, let's face it, self-centered world behind it, the book is still pretty problematic. You basically have lots of little bits from lots of different books written by lots of different writers - some of whom weren't even writers, but rather "showbiz" people writing about "showbiz". Not only are some of the individual bits poorly written on that account, but Peter Hay also fails to bring all of them together cohesively enough, in my opinion, which makes for a very disjointed end result.

[Jeremy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh Lordy, is this a bad book. I would have never read it except that my dad was giving it away, and then it ended up in my bathroom, where I would read a small amount every day. I kept waiting for good anecdotes to emerge, but it was an endless array of mediocre stories about people no one remembers today. For the record, I'm pretty familiar with modern American stage actors and plays, but the most common era this referenced was the 19th century in Britain. That could be forgiven if the anecdotes were amusing, but the duds to hits ratio was at least 20-1. Whoever Peter Hay is, he managed to take one of the great sources of stories, jokes, and anecdotes and make it deadeningly boring. In an odd way, that's quite an accomplishment. I was hoping for something like Presidential Anecdotes, but this doesn't even deserve mention in the same paragraph as that series.

[Mark Mann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whole lotta fun--some apocryphal stories in there, but lots of cool and funny theatre tales