ABSTRACT
The theatre in the First World War at first faltered, then flourished extraordinarily. In September 1914 theatres were closed and tours cancelled. The railways were appropriated to carry troops, and munitions and provincial theatres lost companies they had booked, but by Christmas 1914 much had reverted to the status quo ante. The theatre profession was also instrumental in entertaining the armed forces. Most energetic was Lena Ashwell, who from her base in the Kingsway Theatre, took concert parties and full-scale productions including Macbeth and The School for Scandal to the troops at the front. It was only after the war that the theatre could begin properly to evaluate the waste and horror. The London Pavilion revue began the process with an attack on war profiteers, and Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (staged 1919, but written earlier) provided an indictment of the pre-war Bloomsbury-style ruling middle class who had fiddled while the world prepared to burn.
