Does Anyone Remember...?

Is there a "usual story" about living in Chesterfield?!

Actually, despite the fact that I played for all the major London Old-Time Music Hall companies like Aba Daba, Hiss and Boo, Song and Supper, Chat's Palace, The Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal, Gaslight and Garters, Brick Lane and others, I never actually played for the Players, neither in their old venue ('Evans, Late Joy's) in Villiers Street nor in the new one that is now the Charing Cross Theatre.  I attended a number of shows at both venues over the years – I think they always operated as a club but it was easy enough to join with temporary membership when making a booking, especially for foreign visitors, and I seem to remember that because it was officially a club they could continue serving drinks after the show until midnight. I knew Dominic Le Foe, who ran the company for many years, and at long last he promised me a booking but alas that was just before he got into financial trouble and the whole company folded so my performance never happened.

The Players were known to me by reputation in the 1950s while I was still in Sydney and my colleagues at the Sydney University in 1959 staged a music hall show called Victoriana based on the Players shows and that same Victoriana is still revived annually in Sydney to this very day.  Much of the chairman's patter at the Players was originally devised by Leonard Sachs, who went on to work on the BBC's The Good Old Days, televised from the Leeds City Varieties, and classic lines like asking Australian visitors in the audience: "How does it feel to be the right way up?" became enshrined in the patter of music hall chairmen in all the traditional companies.

There is more information about the Players Company and the Players Theatres on the internet, including a Times obituary for Le Foe when he died in June 2010.  

Bit unclear when the Dominion stopped being a cinema. According to this - cinematreasures.org/theaters/2493



You're right on the cinema name changes: the only two on the map which are still operating as cinemas and have the same name are the Odeon Leicester Square and the Prince Charles.

Lovely thread, really interesting.

Does anyone remember a print advert (I can't remember what it was for) that highlighted some of the streets in Theatre Land to show the outline of the tragedy/comedy theatre masks? I recall it used some of the Seven Dials area, but looking at a map now I can't quite imagine how they did it. Perhaps there was a little artistic license to force it to work.