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Censoring the Uncensored: the Case of ‘Children in Uniform’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

John F. Deeney
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Abstract

British theatre between the two world wars has been a neglected area of interest for contemporary scholars and theatre historians, but a growing body of work in this field has of late begun to challenge the orthodoxies. Much of the new work has focused on the reclamation and repositioning of the work of ‘forgotten’ women playwrights and commercially successful gay playwrights such as Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Here, John Deeney examines how the Lord Chamberlain's licensing of Christa Winsloe's lesbian-themed Children in Uniform, and the commercial and critical success of its production at the Duchess Theatre in 1932–33, invites a reassessment of the possibilities open to women playwrights for exploring ‘deviancy’; and how contemporary theoretical positions too frequently ignore the challenge of the historically and culturally specific. John Deeney is Lecturer and Course Director in Theatre Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He is the editor of Writing Live: an Investigation of the Relationship between Writing and Live Art (New Playwrights Trust, 1998) and a contributor to the forthcoming Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories/New Historiographies (Manchester University Press) and British Theatre between the Wars (Cambridge University Press).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , August 2000 , pp. 219 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes and References

1. The Times, 8 October 1932. All reviews quoted from the production at the Duchess Theatre are taken from the ‘first night file’ held by the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden, London. Not all the reviews are fully referenced in the file.

2. Wearing, J. P., The London Stage, 1930–1939 (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1990)Google Scholar, records that the production ran from 7 October 1932 to 27 May 1933 – a total of 263 performances.

3. See Gale, Maggie B., West End Women: Women and the London Stage, 1918–1962 (London: Routledge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Mädchen in Uniform (1931), directed by Leontine Sagan, screenplay by Christa Winsloe and F. D. Andam, produced by Carl Froelich. Froelich was the director of Deutsches Filmgesellschaft (German Film Association), a collective he had established.

5. Produced at the Hebbel Theatre, Berlin, 1930. The play was produced under the general directorship of Victor Barnowski. An even earlier version of the play, Ritter Nérestan, was produced in Leipzig in 1930, directed by Otto Werther.

6. Kruger, Loren, ed., Lights and Shadows: the Auto-biography of Leontine Sagan (Johannesburg: Witwater-stand University Press, 1996), p. xix, 233Google Scholar.

7. Dyer, Richard, Now You See It: Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar. Dyer notes that Winsloe was, until 1930, ‘still married to Count Ludwig Harvany and well known about café society. It was not until the early 'thirties that she began to live openly as a lesbian and not until her short story “Life Begins” (1935) that she wrote a work exploring lesbian life directly and affirmatively’ (p. 30).

8. Ibid., p. 39. Marks, Elaine, ‘Lesbian Intertextuality’, in Homosexualities and French Literature, ed. Strambolin, George and Marks, Elaine (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 357–8Google Scholar, quoted in Rich, B. Ruby, ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation: Mädchen in Uniform’, in Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture, ed. Creekmur, Corey K. and Doty, Alexander (London: Cassell, 1995), p. 137–66Google Scholar.

9. Rich, ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation’, p. 151.

10. Ibid., p. 151–2.

11. Ibid., p. 152.

12. In 1933 Sagan took a touring production of Children in Uniform to South Africa, produced by the London based ‘Theatrical Variety Co., Ltd.’ (see Kruger, Lights and Shadows, p. 128–38). The play was also produced as Girls in Uniform in the USA on Broadway and at the Blackstone Theatre, Chicago, in March 1933: see Rich, ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation’, p. 164.

13. The public production of plays had been controlled by the Lord Chamberlain since 1737. His powers were revoked in 1968 by the Theatres Act. The Chamberlain not only had the power to deny a licence, he could also demand editing.

14. Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence Papers of Licensed and Unlicensed Plays (LCP Corr.), file on Children in Uniform (1932/11437). The papers are housed in the Manuscript Section of the British Library; they contain applications, readers' reports, letters, memoranda, etc.

15. Ibid.

16. This was not a requirement when there was a question over a play's suitability for a licence. Referrals seem to have been made on an ad hoc basis.

17. LCP Corr., Children in Uniform.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Sinfield, Alan, ‘Private Lives/Public Theater: Noël Coward and the Politics of Homosexual Representation’, Representations, No. 36 (1991), p. 43–63Google Scholar.

21. Grein, J. T., Illustrated London News, 29 10 1932Google Scholar.

22. Winsloe, Christa, trans. Burnham, Barbara, Children in Uniform, in Famous Plays of 1932–1933 (London: Gollancz, 1933), p. 19Google Scholar.

23. Burnup, Peter, Sunday Referee, 9 10 1932Google Scholar.

24. A. E. Wilson, unreferenced clipping.

25. Nicholson, Steve, ‘Unnecessary Plays: European Drama and the British Censor in the 1920s’, Theatre Research International, XX, No. 1, p. 30–36Google Scholar.

26. Grein, Illustrated London News.

27. Dolan, Jill, ‘Lesbian Subjectivity in Realism: Dragging at the Margins of Structure and Ideology’, in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Case, Sue-Ellen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 40–53Google Scholar.

28. Belsey, Catherine, ‘Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text’, in Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class, and Race in Literature and Culture, ed. Newton, Judith and Rosenfelt, Deborah (New York: Methuen, 1985), p. 53Google Scholar, quoted in Stowell, Sheila, ‘Rehabilitating Realism’, journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, VI, No. 2 (1992), p. 81–88Google Scholar.

29. Stowell, ‘Rehabilitating Realism’, p. 86.

30. Gale, West End Women, p. 126.

31. Rich, ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation’, p. 152–3.

32. Ibid., p. 153.

33. Hallett, Nicky, Lesbian Lives: Identity and Auto/Biography in the Twentieth Century (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 33Google Scholar.

34. Said, Edward W., Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978), p. 253Google Scholar, quoted in Hallett, Lesbian Lives.

35. Hellman, Lillian, The Children's Hour (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1981)Google Scholar.

36. See Marshall, Norman, The Other Theatre (London: John Lehmann, 1947)Google Scholar. Marshall also produced Children in Uniform at the Gate.

37. For example, see Dolan, ‘Lesbian Subjectivity in Realism’, and Hart, Lynda, ‘Canonizing Lesbians?’, in Modern American Drama: the Female Canon, ed. Schlueter, June (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1990)Google Scholar. In 1994–95, The Children's Hour had a critically successful production at the Royal National Theatre in London.

38. For example, see de Jongh, Nicholas, Not in Front of the Audience: Homosexuality on Stage (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar; O'Connor, Sean, Straight Acting: Popular Gay Drama from Wilde to Rattigan (London: Cassell, 1998)Google Scholar; Rebellato, Dan, 1956 and All That: the Making of Modern British Drama (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar.

39. Freeman, Sandra, Putting Your Daughters on the Stage: Lesbian Theatre from the 1970s to the 1990s (London: Cassell, 1997)Google Scholar.

40. Castle, Terry, Noël Coward and Radclyffe Hall: Kindred Spirits (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

41. Hallett, Lesbian Lives, p. 32.