Staging Victoria in 1930s London, New York, and Beyond

From 1935-37, audiences on both sides of the Atlantic thronged to see the British writer Laurence Housman’s play Victoria Regina, a series of vignettes about the life of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). In its extended runs in New York and London (as well as in an American tour that took the production to an additional 43 cities), Victoria Regina smashed box-office records; it was, proclaimed the Chicago Daily Tribune, “generally regarded as the most successful tour in the history of the American stage” to that point. At first blush, we might chalk the success of the play up to a sense of collective nostalgia, especially in light of an uncertain present. Faced with the threat of political extremism and prolonged economic crisis, who wouldn’t want to retreat to the court of Queen Victoria and the perceived stability of her reign, especially when the Queen was portrayed by Helen Hayes (in New York) and Pamela Stanley (in London)? As one reporter noted shortly after the play opened in London, in June 1937, “we certainly all went Victorian.” And yet, closer examination of the play and its reception reveals that nostalgia or “conservative modernism” was only one part of the story. In fact, as I will explain in this paper, Housman – by no means a traditionalist – strongly believed that Queen Victoria could do quite a bit of work in the present, a view borne out by the many uses to which his play was put. As a feminist, pacifist, and committed internationalist, Housman wanted to use Victoria to take a powerful stand on questions relating to freedom of speech, democratic nation-building, and the longstanding ties between Britain and Germany. As I will show, audiences in America and Britain responded somewhat differently to Housman’s provocations.