‘A Flute of Praise’: Indian Theatre in Britain in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

In keeping with general trends in contemporary culture and fashion at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, a broad and ill- defined Orientalism was rife in British theatre. The presence could be found both in the design of auditoria and in the content of the repertoire. Mixing the menacing and the mysterious, fantasy collations of China, the Middle East and South Asia proved particularly appealing in the fields of musical comedy and light operetta, dominant forms which reinforced stock characteristics also to be found in the popular genres of pantomime and melodrama. India, the so- called jewel in the imperial crown, which had been ruled directly by Britain since the late 1850s, exerted an especial fascination. A flavour of this can be gleaned from a selection of now forgotten titles: The Nautch Girl, My Friend from India, Indian Prince, The Prince of India, The Great Mogul, The Nabob’s Fortune, The Saucy Nabob, Carylon Sahib, Carnac Sahib, The Mahatma, The Star of India.¹