Books.Guardian.co.uk
Simon Callow is captivated by Patrick Newley’s profile of a filthy and funny queen of comedy, The Amazing Mrs Shufflewick
The Amazing Mrs Shufflewick: The Life of Rex Jameson
by Patrick Newley
120pp, Third Age Press, £12.50
There is considerable overlap between variety and music hall, and it would be rash to attempt an exclusive definition of either. Broadly speaking variety was a more mainstream, more sanitised form of entertainment; music hall was more dangerous, more anarchic, more satirical. Except in the wretchedly bastardised form of television’s The Good Old Days, absurdly recreating the externals of the halls with an audience in fancy dress and performers ghoulishly attempting to exhume the great acts of the past, it had long gone by the time I started going to the theatre.