The Whip
Encyclopedia
The Whip is a melodrama
by Henry Hamilton (playwright)
and Cecil Raleigh
, first performed in 1909 at the Drury Lane Theatre
in London. The play's original production had intricate scenery and spectacular stage effects, including a horse race and a train crash. The production would tour overseas and inspire a 1917 film by the same name.
Tallulah Bankhead
offers a reminiscence of attending The Whip (at the Manhattan Opera House) as a child:
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
by Henry Hamilton (playwright)
Henry Hamilton (playwright)
Henry Hamilton was an English playwright, lyricist, and critic. He is best remembered for his musical theatre pieces....
and Cecil Raleigh
Cecil Raleigh
Cecil Raleigh was an English actor and playwright.He was the son of Dr. John Fothergill Rowlands, and took the stage name of Raleigh...
, first performed in 1909 at the Drury Lane Theatre
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
in London. The play's original production had intricate scenery and spectacular stage effects, including a horse race and a train crash. The production would tour overseas and inspire a 1917 film by the same name.
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
offers a reminiscence of attending The Whip (at the Manhattan Opera House) as a child:
The Whip was a blood-and-thunder melodrama in four acts and fourteen scenes imported from London's Drury Lane Theatre. It boiled with villainy and violence. Its plot embraced a twelve-horse race on a treadmill (for the Gold Cup at Newmarket), a Hunt Breakfast embellished by fifteen dogs, an auto-smash-up, the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, and a train wreck with a locomotive hissing real steam. It boasted a dissolute earl and a wicked marquis, and a heroine whose hand was sought by both knave and hero. It was a tremendous emotional dose for anyone as stage-struck and impressionable as our heroine.