To celebrate the 100th anniversary of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, Dead Poets Live is returning to Wilton’s Music Hall for two nights with a celebration of both The Wasteland and the death of the queen of Victorian Music-hall, Marie Lloyd. Bringing both poetry (and poets) alive on stage with past performers including Tom Hiddleston, Charlotte Rampling, Toby Jones, Freddie Fox, Jason Isaacs, Glenda Jackson, Juliet Stevenson and Rory Kinnear, the award-winning actress Jenna Russell will be playing the role of Marie Lloyd. The events are devised and supported by the T.S.Eliot Foundation, with all proceeds going to charity.
On the 12th October 1922 at Hampstead Cemetery, the funeral of Marie Lloyd, star and emblem of British music hall, was attended by more mourners than any English funeral since the Duke of Wellington’s. ‘Her death…is a significant moment in English history,’ wrote T. S. Eliot, a huge fan of popular music-hall song. ‘She was the greatest music-hall artist of her time…and expressed that part of the the English nation which has perhaps the greatest vitality.’ A little over a week later, Eliot’s The Waste Land was first published in the inaugural issue of The Criterion magazine. Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight!, a sort-of-musical, tells the very funny and moving story of the unlikely relationship between the work of these two great artists. It will be staged on Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th April at 7.30pm, tickets cost £10 and you can book them here.
A Little Bird Loves
