Files
Click on an image to view its copyright status.
Description
The Surrey Threatre was the venue for the London performance of Stirling and Hayes’s play about the Mayflower, which had had its debut in Plymouth at the end of August. It began its run in London in late September at the Surrey Theatre (since demolished), on St George's Circus near Elephant and Castle.
The play’s opening night attracted more attention than its organisers might have expected, though for unwelcome reasons. During the second act, just as the Mayflower was about to "set sail" from the elaborate stage version of the Barbican at Old Plymouth, the ship – built to about ten or twelve feet in height – suddenly collapsed and sent all the Pilgrim Fathers and passengers tumbling unceremoniously onto the stage.
The Westminster Gazette gave a vivid description: “The sails were set, and the Pilgrim Fathers – and mothers – were gathered on the deck and sang the “Old Hundredth” as a preliminary to setting sail. Suddenly something gave way, the ship gradually heeled over towards the audience, and then collapsed, the whole company being thrown to the ground in the very midst of their Psalm, and the ship piled on top of them in a heap of debris and smother of dust. The crash was tremendous and the audience held its breath as the curtain fell on a glimpse of the Pilgrim Fathers falling, higgedly-piggedly, heels over head, towards the footlights. No casualties were reported, but the scene was ruined. Laughter loud and long greeted the opening sentence of the next act: ‘God hath brought us safely across the ocean.’” Incidentally, the Westminster Gazette was also damning in its critique of the play, declaring it “not at all worthy of the occasion it seeks to commemorate”.
Other newspapers took equal pleasure in reporting the incident with headlines like the Daily Chronicle’s “Mayflower collapses on Pilgrim Fathers”. The play itself the Chronicle declared to be nothing more than a “crude melodrama”, with its romantic subplot lifted from Longfellow. Clearly London critics were not inclined to pull punches in the way their Plymouth counterparts had.
Source
Morning Post, “The ‘Mayflower’ as a play”, 18 September 1920.
Yorkshire Post, “Pilgrim Fathers in a Shipwreck”, 22 September 1920.
The Era, “The Mayflower”, 22 September 1920.
Birmingham Post, “The ‘Mayflower’ production; accident at last night’s performance”, 21 September 1920.
Daily Chronicle, “Real shipwreck on the stage”, 21 September 1920.
Sketch, 29 September, 1920. Image clipping from James Rendel Harris Archive, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.