Ada Reeve (1876-1966)
Ada Reeve (1876-1966)
(The Grey River Argus [Australia]
25th June, 1917)
ADA REEVE - ZEPPELIN RAIDS
"It's fine to have a Saturday night without a Zeppelin raid," said Miss Ada Reeve in the course of a recent interview in Sydney.
The English comedienne has been in five Zeppelin raids in England, and they all occurred on Saturday nights. On the first occasion Miss Reeve and her company were playing "Winnie Brook, Widow." Mr. Jacobs, the singing conductor at the Tivoli, was a member of the company, and the warning to put out all lights was given just as he entered and said, "Hullo, Mrs Brooks, I am glad to see you!" The lights were out by the time he said "Mrs Brooks." Miss Reeve quickly turned the situation to account, and remarked: "I should be glad to see you. you must have second sight." The audience quickly saw the point, and applauded. Fortunately there was a piano in the scene, and like a flash the famous artist decided to sing songs so that they would not get alarmed. Mr. Jacobs was the accompanist, and Miss Reeve sang songs until they were assured that all danger had passed. Then the lights went up again, and the performance was resumed.
On another occasion - that of the fifth raid - the usual warning was given to the audience that the Zeppelins were approaching, and the usual precautions were taken. Miss Reeve wondered how the people would take it; but to her surprise they received the announcement with ironical cheers and said: "Hooray! Hooray! Let them come!" The previous Saturday night two Zeppelins had been destroyed, and the people had faith, and felt that others were likely to share the same fate. Sure enough two more Zeppelins were destroyed on that evening.
Miss Reeve said she was never frightened when these raids were on because she is a fatalist. It was a terrible experience, however, to hear the bombs going off, knowing that probably someone was getting killed or injured.
(from "Adventures In London" by James Douglas - Cassell and Company, Limited: 1909)
ADA REEVE
ADA REEVE is a mime to the manner born. Her father was an actor of the old school who played with Irving and the Kendals, with Toole, and Sothern, and Phelps. In the early seventies her mother was a popular soubrette. Ada was only six when she faced the footlights for the first time at Dewsbury. At twelve she was a mature comic singer and dancer. She was a child-actress at the Pavilion Theatre, Mile End, where she played the lachrymose Little Willie in "East Lynne," and the lachrymose Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It was at the Pavilion she learned from Mr. Isaac Cohen that art of speaking distinctly which most English actresses never learn at all. At fourteen she was famous in the music-halls as one of the "Sisters Reeve," and soon afterwards she was singing and dancing in single harness, making hit after hit at the Pavilion, the Alhambra, the Tivoli, the Royal, and the Oxford, with tomboy songs such as "What Do I Care?" "The Little Puritan," "I'm a little too young to know, you know."
I believe she claims to have been the first actress to turn a catherine-wheel on the music-hall stage. It was at the Cambridge, and the delighted audience used to yell every night at her, "Over, Ada!" She was the perfect tomboy that the cockney humorist adores. In many ways she resembles that darling of the gallery boys, Nellie Farren, for, in addition to her gift of boisterous fun, she has the queer little streak of homely pathos that the people of London love. It was this streak of pathos which made Mile End sob over her Little Willie, and her dying Eva, and her forlorn waif in "The Crimes of Paris." She brought tears into the eyes of the sentimental music-hall audiences when she sang "Only a Penny." This odd mixture of wild drollery and naive sentiment is a cockney product, and Ada Reeve mixed the mixture almost as cleverly as Nellie Farren. By this great cockney mixture she won the great cockney heart.
In 1894 the vigilant eye of Mr. George Edwardes saw the cockney genius of Ada Reeve, and with his usual insight he stole her from the music-halls, giving her the chief part in "The Shop Girl," which ran for two years. Then she was Julie Bon-Bon in "The Gay Parisienne." Since then she has oscillated vigorously between musical comedy and the music-halls, now and again touring in America, Australia, and South Africa. For a long time she was the bright particular star of the Palace. She was at her very best with Mr. Arthur Roberts. To see Ada Reeve and Arthur Roberts playing together was almost as delightful as it was to see Nellie Farren and Fred Leslie. Their spontaneous drolleries fed each other and made it very hard for playgoers to bear the physical pain of incessant laughter. In those days we were almost compelled to cry for mercy. It was not easy to endure the muscular toil of laughing for a whole evening. I remember one night when Ada and Arthur were both in their maddest and merriest mood, and I went home absolutely worn out and sore with laughter.
Ada laughed at Arthur, and Arthur laughed at Ada, and we all laughed at both of them, and both of them laughed at us. So continuously did we laugh that the play could hardly get on, and, in fact, it did not get on except when Ada and Arthur went off the stage. There was one moment when Ada Reeve was paralysed by her sense of humour. The gags and antics of Arthur Roberts had reduced her to impotence. The more she laughed at him the more absurdly absurd he became. I fear there is no such laughing nowadays.
(Black and White [UK periodical]
1st April, 1911)
A COMEDIENNE WHO HAS CAPTURED SOUTH AFRICA
Although it is quite usual for our Colonials to give a hearty reception to great artistes from the Mother Country, it is seldom, if ever, that an actress has created so profound an impression upon South Africa as has Miss Ada Reeve, who has been touring there since December last. Commencing with Bloemfontein, her tour through the country has been one of veritable triumphs. At Johannesburg, at Pretoria, at Pietermaritzburg, at every town in which she has performed, she has electrified her audiences into unparalleled enthusiasm.
Theatres have been packed, standing room even being paid for cheerfully at exorbitant rates, and her appearance has always been the signal for a display of unprecedented emotion. Again and again she has been recalled, to be bombarded with a riot floral tributes and kindly messages. At Johannesburg, Miss Reeve was cheered almost to her home by crowds lining the footpaths. A comedienne of inimitable charm, Miss Ada Reeve has established herself firmly in the affections of South Africa, and when, as she intends, she pays another visit to our youngest Colony there is no doubt as to the manner in which she will be greeted
Mr. Barrie has told us that woman was made, not out of man's rib, but out of man's funnybone. Ada Reeve is a living proof of this theory. There are some people who say that women have no sense of humour, but they have never seen Ada Reeve. She cannot help herself. She is not an artificial humorist. Her humour is quite natural. It flows out of her temperament. She is incorrigibly hoydenish, and her high spirits never flag. She seems to be quite free from the vice of self-consciousness, and she can let herself go in a whirl of rollicking gaiety that is irresistibly infectious. She is not preoccupied with her own femininity. She is able to forget herself in the riot of audacious mirth. There are some actresses whose self-approbation makes you forget their acting. They are too pretty to act. Ada Reeve trusts to her brains rather than to her looks. She is not afraid to burlesque herself, and to turn to account her physical eccentricities. In this vein she is as daring as Marie Tempest. She has the abandon of the male comedian as well as the charm of the feminine droll. She does not hesitate to make herself grotesque, and ungainly, and ludicrous, parodying her own voice, caricaturing her own face, and lampooning her own figure. She shoots out her jaw and stretches out her neck in a romp of self-derision. There is no stiff dignity in her gestures. She throws herself into any attitude that suggests her mood, treating her limbs with ironical contempt, and flinging them about in a jointless revel of physical recklessness. Her fun is the perfection of careless impudence. It is pure cockney fun, the fun that treats the body as a splendid joke, and caricatures every feature of the face and every curve of the flesh.
The mobility of Ada Reeve's face is extraordinary. Liveliest of all are her amazing eyes. Her drollery rampages in those comical orbs. They are very large and very protuberant. The ordinary eyes hide behind the eyelids, but hers come right out across the footlights. They bulge with a defiantly rolling sparkle. You can see them sideways. Her eye in profile is as prominent as her nose. And how she uses her eyes! She puts into their gyrations all her archness and all her innuendo, all her piquancy and all her insolence. You cannot think of her with her eyes shut. She is all eyes, just as Marie Lloyd is all teeth. She deliberately exaggerates her eyes, making them devour her face, until you half expect to see her head turning into two rolling and rollicking globes of fun. She throws her eyes at you like footballs. They grow on you until they look like balloons.
Just as Niobe was all tears, so Ada Reeve is all smiles. Her mouth is the only serious rival of her eyes. It is a generous mouth, prodigally stocked with laughing teeth. Her smile is illimitable. It begins with a tiny pout, and it slowly expands until it touches each of the wings, and finally disappears behind the scenes, ending on the one side somewhere near the Tottenham Court Road, and on the other somewhere near Piccadilly, leaving her teeth gleaming alone in a blinding palisade of laughter. Ada Reeve is not afraid to smile, and, when she smiles, the whole house smiles too. Every long face grows broad, and every pursed-up mouth stretches itself sideways in an india-rubber imitation and emulation of the smile that has no end. An Ada Reeve audience is an orgy of smiles, neatly arranged in ranks from the first row of the stalls to the last row of the gallery. The other night at the Apollo I watched the whole ascending scale of smiles in the crowded house. There was not a break in it until the last smile vanished in the roof. The theatre was decorated with smiles while she was making preposterous love to Podmore, driving him distracted, and driving us distracted, with her harum-scarum endearments and impish coquetries.
It is a pity that good songs are so rare, for it as a diseuse that Ada Reeve is inimitable. She has that Parisian mastery of diction which enables her to combine the art of talk with the art of song. She can talk and sing at the same time, making every syllable tell, and every point go home. She can work such wonders with a pointless song, that one rages to hear her sing a song that bristles with points. She can extract so much humour from humourless songs that one asks in a kind of fury why nobody writes humorous songs for her. The songs in "Butterflies" make me sigh for a song like "Tact." But good songs are scarcer than good singers, just as good plays are scarcer than good actors. The result is that Ada Reeve, like Forbes-Robertson, is compelled to make bricks without straw. Why on earth does she not offer a prize for a singable song?