View from the auditorium of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane entitled '11 a.m. Full Company' showing the cast gathering on stage for a rehearsal, possibly for Desert Song. Lino cut by Peter Bax, c.1927. Bequest of Myrette Morven.

Black and white print on card of a view from the auditorium of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane entitled '11am. Full Company'. Probably a view of a rehearsal , showing the orchestra, part of the first three rows of the stalls, and part of the stage, with 11 figures in the background on stage (possibly dancers) in rehearsal clothes, standing near an upright piano stage left, and a male figure with back to the audience downstage right.

Bequest of Myrette Morvan

This print was acquired in 1987 as part of a small collection given by the estate of the actress Myrette Morven (1907-1986), who was born in Dublin as Eileen Trueman Wyly. Myrette Morven appeared in many important musicals in the 1920s, notably the successful Drury Lane productions Rose-Marie, 1925, The Desert Song, 1927, and Show Boat 1927. She continued her career as an actress and dancer into the 1950s, in plays, musicals and films, and appeared in productions including Something in the Air, Palace Theatre, 1944 in which she understudied and appeared for Cicely Courtneidge, and in films including The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and Two Way Stretch (1960). The collection comprised programmes, photographs, silk programmes, and memorabilia relating to her career including the Totem Pole girl cracker produced by Tom Smith’s cracker company (S.96-2007), a souvenir felt doll of a Totem-pole chorus girl (S.95-2007) a small wooden figure of a Totem pole girl (S.97-2007), and two other prints by Peter Bax of Drury Lane Theatre in 1927, one a glimpse from the prompt corner of the Totem girl dance taking place on stage in 1927 (S.98-2007).

Myrette Morven would have been 19 or 20 years old when she first appeared as one of the 60 chorus girls in Rose-Marie, ‘A Romance of the Canadian Rockies’, the ‘musical play’ with book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein and music by Rudlof Friml and Herbert Stothart. A hit on its opening on Broadway in September 1924, the production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane opened on 20th March 1927 to rave reviews and ran for an unprecedented 581 performances.

Rose-Marie’s scenery and costumes amazed audiences and critics alike, one critic marvelling: ‘it is doubtful if, even at the ‘Lane’ there has been a more sumptuous yet thoroughly sumptuous spectacle…. Nothing more beautiful can be imagined than the dresses of the chorus ladies’. The girls’ dance at Totem Pole Lodge, at Kootenay Pass in the Canadian Rockies, Act 1, scene 5, was a sensation of the show. As the reviewer ‘Carados’ noted: ‘the most striking and memorable feature of Rose-Marie, however, is a barbaric dance of … sixty damsels attired in extraordinarily jazzily designed costumes, apparently intended to represent the apparel of the Red Indians. This dance, led by a singing real Redskin squaw (billed as Mira Nirska) is so crammed with surprising.. changes of evolutions and effects as to put several feathers in the already well-feathered cap pf producer Felix Edwardes’. Another critic praised Rose-Marie’s ‘wonder chorus’, noting that the audience cheered so long after the wonderful totem pole dance, that the play was held up, and would have gone on longer, had not the principal comedian indicated that the girls were already dressing for their next scene so couldn’t take another curtain call. He went on to praise the ‘Dazzling Totem Dance’ in which all the girls are attired in brilliant colours of the Red Indian fetish poles, calling it ‘a wonderful piece of concerted work – half ballet and half military drill, with amazing and dazzling effects that leave one breathless. When all these girls – literally dozens of them – fall down like a crop of brilliant tulips falling before a reaper, the effect is extraordinary, and there is nothing left to do but cheer.’

This print is one of a set of three, one of which is dated 1927.

This print is one of three by Peter Bax showing views of The Theatre Royal Drury Lane, one showing a glimpse of the stage from the prompt corner during a performance of Rose Marie in 1927, one of the stage door from Russell Street and this of the cast gathering on stage for an 11am rehearsal. It sems from their clothing that the performers on stage are dancers, and one is leaning against an upright piano. This is possibly a rehearsal for The Desert Song which followed Rose-Marie in Drury Lane Theatre in 1927.

The artist Peter Bax worked at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane as a stage manager and a stage designer before moving to the British Broadcasting Company as a Studio Manager in 1934. He was one of the original team of people - several of which were recruited for their theatre backgrounds - to be appointed by the BBC to start preparations for high-resolution broadcasting. After the war he became the Artistic Director at Alexandra Palace, the home of BBC television after1936.

S.99-2007