ABSTRACT
The repertory movement in Britain before 1914 was the most obvious legacy of Granville Barker and the Court Theatre. Over six years from 1907, repertory theatres opened in four major cities – Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool and Birmingham. The finances of the first repertory theatre to be established, in Manchester, were in the capable, generous and well-provided hands of Annie Horniman. She had been brought up a Quaker and told that theatre was sinful, but she was a forceful character who rode a lightweight men’s bicycle and went to Bayreuth to see Wagner’s operas. On one level, the Glasgow Repertory Theatre may be seen as part of a strong growth in theatre in Scotland in the first years of the twentieth century. There were thirty-two theatres in the country in 1900, but fifty-three by 1910. Liverpool Repertory Theatre was really the child of Manchester, though it was lighter, perhaps more ‘commercial’, than that enterprise.
