mercury-theatre-colchester-on-tour

The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures.

Part of the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theatre Project (1935–39) was a New Deal program to fund theatre and other live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States during the Great Depression. In 1935, John Houseman, director of the Negro Theatre Unit in New York, invited his recent collaborator, 20-year-old Orson Welles, to join the project. Their first production was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth with an entirely African-American cast. It became known as the Voodoo Macbeth because Welles changed the setting to a mythical island suggesting the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with Haitian vodou fulfilling the rôle of Scottish witchcraft. The play opened April 14, 1936, at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and was received rapturously. That production was followed by an adaptation of the farce Horse Eats Hat and, in 1937, Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Marc Blitzstein's socialist musical The Cradle Will Rock. The latter received much publicity when on the eve of its preview the theatre was padlocked by the WPA. Welles invited the waiting audience to walk several blocks to a neighboring theatre where the show was performed without sets or costumes. Blitzstein played a battered upright piano while the cast, barred from taking the stage by their union, sat in the audience and rose from their seats to sing and deliver their dialogue. Welles and Houseman broke with the Federal Theatre Project in August 1937 and founded their own repertory company, which they called the Mercury Theatre. The name was inspired by the title of the iconoclastic magazine, The American Mercury. "All the Mercury offerings bore the credit line, 'Production by Orson Welles,'" wrote critic Richard France, "implying that he functioned not only as the director, but as designer, dramatist, and, most often, principal actor as well. To be sure, this generated a good bit of resentment among his collaborators (the designers, in particular). However, in a more profound sense, that credit is, in fact, the only accurate description of a Welles production. The concepts that animated each of them originated with him and, moreover, were executed in such a way as to be subject to his absolute control." Welles and Houseman secured the Comedy Theatre, a 687-seat Broadway theatre at 110 West 41st Street in New York City, and reopened it as the Mercury Theatre. It was the venue for virtually all their productions from November 1937 through November 1938.

The Mercury Theatre began with a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed adaption of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar that evoked comparison to contemporary Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It premiered on Broadway on November 11, 1937. The production moved from the Mercury Theatre to the larger National Theatre on January 24, 1938. It ran through May 28, 1938, for a total of 157 performances. In addition to Welles (who played Brutus), the cast included Joseph Holland (Julius Caesar), George Coulouris (Marcus Antonius), Joseph Cotten (Publius), Martin Gabel (Cassius), Hiram Sherman (Casca), John A. Willard (Trebonius), Grover Burgess (Ligarius), John Hoysradt (Decius Brutus), Stefan Schnabel (Metellus Cimber), Elliott Reid (Cinna), William Mowry (Flavius), William Alland (Marullus), George Duthie (Artemidorus), Norman Lloyd (Cinna, the poet), Arthur Anderson (Lucius), Evelyn Allen (Calpurnia, wife to Caesar), Muriel Brassler (Portia, wife to Brutus), and John Berry (extra). At the National Theatre, Polly Rowles took the role of Calpurnia and Alice Frost played Portia. From January 20, 1938, a roadshow version of Caesar with a different cast toured the United States. The company included Tom Powers as Brutus, and Edmond O'Brien as Marc Antony.

The Mercury Theatre's second production was a staging of Thomas Dekker's Elizabethan comedy The Shoemaker's Holiday, which attracted "unanimous raves again". It premiered on January 1, 1938, and ran to 64 performances in repertory with Caesar, until April 1. It then moved to the National Theatre through April 28.

The first season of the Mercury Theatre concluded with George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, which again attracted strong reviews. It premiered April 29, 1938, at the Mercury Theatre and ran for six weeks, closing June 11. Shaw insisted that none of the text be altered or cut, resulting in a longer and more conventional production that limited Welles's creative expression. It was chosen to demonstrate that the Mercury's style did not depend upon extensive revision and elaborate staging. Geraldine Fitzgerald, a fellow member of the Gate Theatre company while Welles was in Dublin, was brought over from Ireland for her American debut as Ellie Dunn. Welles played the octogenarian Captain Shotover. Other cast were Brenda Forbes (Nurse Guinness), Phyllis Joyce (Lady Utterword), Mady Christians (Hesione Hushabye), Erskine Sanford (Mazzini Dunn), Vincent Price (Hector Hushabye), John Hoysradt (Randall Utterword) and Eustace Wyatt (The Burglar)

Available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible entrance
• Wheelchair-accessible seating
• Wheelchair-accessible toilet
• Wheelchair-accessible parking

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