‘The Flaming Torch’: A Pageant Play

Pageant type

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Performances

Place: Royal Court Theatre (Liverpool) (Liverpool, Lancashire, England)

Year: 1932

Indoors/outdoors: Indoors

Number of performances: 9

Notes

4–11 June 1932, 7.30pm

Matinee on 4 June 1932, 2.30pm

Name of pageant master and other named staff

  • Producer [Pageant Master]: Thomas, Charles
  • Designer of Scenery, Costumes and Properties: T.J. Bond
  • Musical Director: John Tobin
  • Ballet Mistress: Monica Bretherton
  • Stage Managers: Gordon Douglas and Laurence Tiffin
  • Property Mistress: Irene Carr-Owen
  • Matron of the Children: Doris Tiffen
  • Accompanist: Tilly Connely
  • Dramatic Adviser: Stephen Jack

Names of executive committee or equivalent

n/a

Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)

Corkhill, Percy

Names of composers

  • Liszt, Franz
  • Haydn, Joseph
  • Beethoven, Ludwig van
  • Stanford, Charles Villiers
  • Wagner, Richard
  • Dvořák, Antonín
  • Holst, Gustav
  • Gounod, Charles
  • Brahms, Johannes
  • Heykens, Jonny
  • Chopin, Frédéric
  • Schumann, Robert

Numbers of performers

150

The figure of 150 is an estimate. There were also 'hundreds' of nurses, though they were not formally part of the cast.1

Financial information

Object of any funds raised

The pageant was ‘presented under the auspices of’ the Merseyside Hospitals Council, in aid of Merseyside Hospital Week.

Linked occasion

Merseyside Hospital Week.

Audience information

  • Grandstand: No
  • Grandstand capacity: n/a
  • Total audience: n/a

Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest

n/a

Associated events

Merseyside Hospital Week

Pageant outline

Prologue

The beginning of time. A voice speaks: 'Let there be light'.

The Lighting of the Torches

The Spirit of Healing kindles her torch from the sun, before investing with the same light her attendant spirits, Faith, Hope, Courage, Love and Knowledge.  

Ballet: ‘The Torches’

The allegorical action of the previous episodes segues into a torch ballet, arranged by Miss Bretherton.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Recited by the Spirit of Healing and acted in dumb show, while the choir chant Hebrew music.

An Early Christian Hospital

A tableau featuring St Fabiola and showing the treatment of a patient in what the pageant claims is the first-known Christian hospital.

Men Who Have Carried the Torch

This is the first of two processional scenes, dealing with the men and women 'of all ages and all nationalities, who by discovery, research and skill, have contributed to medical and scientific knowledge as we know it to-day.' As newspaper reports commented:

It is of especial interest to note that each country will be represented, and each character played, by a man of that particular nationality, and they will be accompanied by a torchbearer and by a child of their own race. England, Scotland, Japan, France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Egypt will be so represented. Throughout this episode the choir will sing an anthem.

Women Who Have Carried the Torch

Processional.  

Ballet: ‘The Alexandra Rose’

Conflict with the Enemy; Ballet: ‘Revolution’

Mars, the war god, calls for blood and discord in the world. Sounds of battle are heard off stage; war songs and a bombardment are also heard. The wounded are brought on, shot, gassed and blind, and are attended by ambulance men and nurses, while Mars retreats impotent before the symbol of the Red Cross.

Ballet: ‘The Joy of Health’

Episode 10: Childhood

The ballet celebrating youth is followed by a multi-scene episode, which begins - as newspaper reports related - with 'the days of Dickens, when the microbes of dirt and neglect prevailed'.

The scenes are as follows: 

  • (a) The Early Triumph of Disease
  • (b) The Influence of Dickens
  • (c) The Rout of Disease
  • (d) Motherhood
  • (e) Safety First

In the third of these scenes, children - having been set upon by disease - are released from its clutches once the 'public conscience' has awakened.

The final scene is described as a 'playlet', in which 'Safety First' is introduced as an idea. As the press reported, 'It takes the form of a witty commentary upon that form of education system which is so concerned with the child’s physical well being that no time is left for school lessons.'



Ballet: ‘Our Daily Perils’

The Closing of the Books

The Spirit of Healing returns, describing how 'every night, when the sick in mind and body search in vain for sleep, she gently closes the books of care and sickness, confident that they will not be reopened on the same page in the stimulus of another sunrise and a fresh day'.

[untitled]

This is composed of two largely processional scenes, seemingly involving hundreds of nurses as well as the pageant cast proper. The scenes are:

(a) The Unlighted Torch
(b) The Procession Towards the Light

Epilogue

Key historical figures mentioned

  • Hippocrates of Kos (also known as Hippocrates II) (460BC-370BC)
  • Aelius Galenus (also known as Galen) (129-200x216)
  • St Fabiola (d. 399)
  • Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
  • Louis IV (also known as Louis the Saint) (1200-1227)
  • St Elizabeth of Hungary (also known as St Elizabeth of Thuringia) (1207-1231)
  • Harvey, William (1578–1657) physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood
  • Hunter, John (1728–1793) surgeon and anatomist
  • Jenner, Edward (1749–1823) surgeon and pioneer of smallpox vaccination
  • Simpson, Sir James Young, first baronet (1811–1870) physician and obstetrician
  • Lister, Joseph, Baron Lister (1827–1912) surgeon and founder of a system of antiseptic surgery
  • Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939) founder of psychoanalysis
  • Nightingale, Florence (1820–1910) reformer of Army Medical Services and of nursing organization
  • Wilkinson [née Seward], Catherine [Kitty] (1786–1860) philanthropist
  • Dickens, Charles John Huffam (1812–1870) novelist
  • Alexandra [Princess Alexandra of Denmark] (1844–1925)  queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the British dominions beyond the seas, and empress of India, consort of Edward VII

Musical production

  • Liszt, ‘Les Preludes’
  • Haydn, ‘Awake the Harp’ and ‘The Marvellous Work’, from ‘The Creation’
  • ‘Lasst uns Erfreuen’ – melody from ‘Geistliche Kirchengesäng’
  • Hayden, Minuet from the Quartet, op. 3, no. 5
  • Beethoven, Presto, from the 7th Symphony
  • Beethoven, Finale, from the 5th Symphony
  • Stanford, ‘Ave Atque Vale’
  • Wagner, Good Friday Music from ‘Parsifal’
  • Dvořák, Largo, from ‘New World Symphony’
  • Haydn, Presto, from the Quartet, op. 3, no. 5
  • Holst, ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’
  • Beethoven, ‘The Storm’, from the ‘Pastoral Symphony’
  • Beethoven, Introduction, from the 4th Symphony
  • Beethoven, Allegro, from the 7th Symphony
  • ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’, traditional
  • Holst, ‘Mercury’
  • Gounod, ‘The Funeral March of a Marionette’
  • ‘The Whistler and his Dog’, traditional
  • Brahms, ‘Cradle Song’
  • Heykens, ‘Standchen’
  • Holst, ‘Uranus the Magician’
  • Chopin, ‘The Storm’
  • Wagner, ‘March of the Knights of the Holy Grail’
  • Schumann, ‘Traumerie’
  • Schumann, ‘Evening Song’
There was a large choir, and the ballets by Monica Bretherton were performed by dancers from the Blue Bird School, Cleopatra School, Miss Clare’s School, Miss Deacon’s, the Kelly and Elsby School, Miss Maryle West’s School and the Gertrude Sides School. The ballet ‘Shipwreck in the Perils’ was composed by the Kelly and Elsby School.

Newspaper coverage of pageant

Liverpool Echo

Book of words

n/a

Other primary published materials

n/a

The Flaming Torch: Souvenir Programme. Liverpool, 1932.

References in secondary literature

n/a

Archival holdings connected to pageant

  • Copy of programme in Liverpool Archives, 942.721.CUT.

Sources used in preparation of pageant

n/a

Summary

Footnotes

  1. ^ The Flaming Torch: Souvenir Programme (Liverpool, 1932); Liverpool Echo, 3 June 1932: press cutting in Liverpool Archives, 942.721.CUT.
  2. ^ Liverpool Echo, 3 June 1932: press cutting in Liverpool Archives, 942.721.CUT
  3. ^ Liverpool Echo, 3 July 1932: press cutting in Liverpool Archives, 942.721.CUT.
  4. ^ Who Was Who; John Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism (Liverpool, 2006 [2000]), 20-1.
  5. ^ See press cuttings in Liverpool Archives, 942.721.CUT.

How to cite this entry

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘‘The Flaming Torch’: A Pageant Play’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1282/