In the early twentieth century (and before that even), it was not unusual to see a man dressed as a woman or vice versa. Often, they would be actors performing roles while dressed as the opposite gender for the benefit of spectators in the music-halls and variety acts of the day. To this day, popular drag acts still draw crowds up and down the country, whether they are performers on stage or in bars. But with the popularity of Eurovision performers Conchita Wurst and Bilal Hassani, not to mention the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, could we be ready to witness the renaissance of music-hall theatre (or ‘vaudeville’)?
The History of Music-Hall
Drag acts were an integral part of this genre until the end of the First World War when many music-hall theatres committed instead to putting on so-called ‘variety’ performances. Men were famed for portraying both the great women of the age and others besides. Prolific female impersonator Malcolm Scott was among the most popular, as his characters weren’t necessarily your typical pantomime dames. Scott played everyone from Nell Gwyn to Boudica.
Sometimes, a part of these acts was for performers to reveal their gender mid-performance (i.e., by removing their wig), and sometimes the gender of the performer was not revealed unless it could be used to embarrass infatuated men in the audience. Most often, the characters portrayed were genuine impressions of well-known people of the day, exaggerated (sexually or otherwise) for comic effect, in a manner no more disarming than vocal impersonators today. The best drag acts began to produce standalone performances, as they were often the most popular performers. In the US, vaudevillian music-hall was built around hugely popular drag queens like Julian Eltinge, who were extremely well-paid.
The Present Day
Now, however, there are a number of factors that make it hard for modern drag acts to be a part of any music-hall renaissance. In America, where drag and gay culture did not mix until well into the twentieth century, the term ‘vaudeville’ now has a different meaning, referring to any and all musical theatre with comedic overtones. The cross-dressing showstoppers that made the genre famous appear to have been consigned to the past, with skills of the ‘vaudeville tradition’ no longer appreciated.
Music-hall theatres in the UK were often requisitioned during the wars, and many have since been repurposed. In America, the drag scene was forced underground by the criminalization of gay culture, to which drag had now been intrinsically interwoven.
This begs the question of whether we actually need a rebirth of the music-hall traditions; have these simply been transferred to modern cabaret and variety performances? We often hear those words, don’t we: ‘that show has its origins in music-hall theatre…’ It is a rather sad end for a genre that has resonated so much in popular culture and that, as a form of entertainment, was unrivalled at the time. Rich and poor once flocked to see such performers as Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd.
The words ‘music-hall’ exist still as a kind of reminder, attached to new sub-genres and utilized as a reminiscent trope for other forms of entertainment. While film and TV continually reference this, the legacy of music-hall covers hundreds of areas, one of which, surprisingly, being online casino gaming. While 25 casino rewards brands are reviewed here for fans of iGaming, you can see that music-hall makes an appearance among them in the form of Music Hall Casino, which uses tropes from the genre to provide themed games. While this is hardly the legacy such performers would have imagined back in music-hall’s heyday, it’s good to see the artform make its way into all forms of modern entertainment.
While music-hall delighted the masses for almost eighty years, it was a product of its era, where musical theatre was the most sophisticated and in-your-face entertainment going. Modern drag acts may still exist, but the majority are not ‘acts’; they are simply people empowering themselves and entertaining us by being who they are. Perhaps, if anything, we are too enlightened to properly enjoy the bawdy and over-zealous humour of music-hall in 2019.
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