“What is the role of the theatre in The Singing Fire?”
East End Londoners not only went to the theatre, they fought over their favourite plays and rival actors the way Londoners today fight about rival football teams. Patrons, ie fans, including men, sent chocolates and flowers to their favourite actors, male and female. This passion was all the stronger for the Jewish community. Yiddish theatre was new and all the more beloved because of its novelty. Historical plays gave pride to new immigrants who’d left the legal oppression of Eastern Europe for the legal freedom but more subtle oppression of being an impoverished and hardly liked minority in London. Melodramas were popular because their humble lives were written large on stage and given meaning, more beloved than today’s favourite t.v. soaps and night time dramas.
Jacob Adler’s affair with Dinah Shtettin, both actors in the Yiddish theatre, was the subject of much pleasurable gossip in the Jewish community.
Jacob Adler, most famous actor of Yiddish theatre, London and New York
Celia Adler, Yiddish actress in NY, daughter of Jacob Adler and Dinah Shtettin
Unfortunately for London and fortunately for New York, the panic in the theatre that arose from the cry of “Fire!” led to several deaths and the closing of the theatre. The fire turned out to be a false alarm, but Yiddish theatre in London was suspended for quite some time. The actors and writers left for New York, where Yiddish theatre began to flourish as a result of their arrival.
