Music Hall

Music Hall is a form of British theatrical entertainment which reached its peak of popularity between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:

Speciality Acts

Besides straightforward music and comedy, a plethora of weird and wonderful acts were commonly enjoyed in Music Halls. These were known collectively as speciality acts, and included:

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• Lions Comiques: essentially, men dressed as a 'toff', who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an Aristocrat.
• Male and female impersonators, perhaps more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen.
• Aerial acts, of the sort usually seen at the Circus
• Adagio: essentially a sort of cross between a dance act and a juggling act, consisting usually of a male dancer who threw a slim, pretty young girl around. A lot of the moves in modern choreography were evolved in Adagio acts.
• Magic acts and escapologists, such as Harry Houdini.
• Cycling Acts: again, a development of a Circus act, consisting of either a solo or a troupe of trick cyclists. There was even 7 piece a cycling band called Seven Musical Savonas, who played 50 instruments between them, and Kaufmann?s Cycling Beauties, a troupe of girls in Victorian swim wear.
• Ventriloquists, or Vent acts as they were called in the business.
• Electric acts, using the newly discovered phenomena of static electricity to produce tricks such as lighting gas jets and setting fire to handkerchiefs through the performers fingertips.
• Knife throwing and sword swallowing. The most spectacular of its time was the Victorina Troupe, who swallowed a sword fired from a rifle.
• Juggling and plate spinning acts. Another variation was the Diabolo.
• Fire eaters and other eating acts, such as eating glass, razor blades, goldfish etc.
• Mentalism acts. Commonly a male mentalist, blindfolded on stage, and an attractive female assistant passing among the audience. The assistant would collect objects from the audience, and the mentalist would identify each by 'reading' the assistants mind. This was usually accomplished by a clever system of codes and clues from the assistant.
• Mime artists and Impressionists.
• Balloon modelling acts.
• Trampoline acts.
• Animal acts: Talking dogs, Flea circuses, and all manner of animals doing tricks.
• Stilt walkers.
• Puppet acts, including human puppets and living doll acts.
• Comic pianists.
• Cowboy/Wild West acts.