Sefton Henry Parry

Parry returned to Cape Town in 1857, this time with a professional British theatre-company, and built a wooden theatre in Harrington Street.[8]

He is said to have introduced the tradition of a seasonal pantomime with his production of Beauty and the Beast in 1857.[9] Despite that, he claimed the record again the following year and billed Babes in the Wood as "The First Christmas Pantomime in South Africa". It was performed on 27 and 28 December in the Cape Town Theatre with an additional performance at the request of the Governor.[10]

Also in 1858 Parry launched the first recorded professional performance of the full play of Hamlet in his season of Shakespeare plays.[11] During the season, James Lycett, a Shakespeare-loving English businessman who had organised amateur dramatics in Cape Town for many years, was accidentally wounded on stage while playing Macduff to Parry's Macbeth.[12]

Competition came early in 1858 from J. E. H. English, self-styled 'celebrated comic vocalist' at the Theatre Royal, Sheffield, who had arrived in Cape Town with other members of the Sefton Parry Company. After just two months English broke away and set up a rival company called "The Gentlemen Amateurs" in The New Music Hall, Buitekant Street which he had fitted for himself. English's success was considerable, leading Parry to quit the Cape.[13] Parry sold his theatre to W Glyn, a Cape Town businessman who built and let theatres to some profit. Glyn then let the Harrington Street Theatre to Mr English. However, by November, English had disappeared from the scene and the following year, 1859, Parry returned and bought back his theatre.[14]

The same year, during his travels, Parry, his wife and fellow professional comedian George Spencer successfully entertained in Gibraltar for several months along with some amateurs from the garrison. The three then sailed on the P&O steamer Ceylon to Malta to entertain there.[15]

Parry then commissioned Glyn to build a brick theatre at the corner of Caledon and Harrington street. Much of the planning was Parry's and that of his associate William Groom. It was so constructed that it could be turned into cottages in an emergency. Parry named it the Theatre Royal. It opened on 9 August 1860. (The Theatre Royal was also briefly referred to as the Cape Town Theatre.)

Parry broke away from the Cape Town Dramatic Club to form the Alfred Dramatic Club and in so doing effectively established the first regular professional theatre company in South Africa. It had almost 40 members with Parry as manager and G.H. Galt as secretary.[4] After the success of The Irish Tutor on 15 September, Prince Alfred, who was visiting, bestowed his name upon them, and they became known as the Royal Alfred Dramatic Club.[16]

Parry returned to London in November 1860 on the Royal Mail steamer Dane via St Helena and Ascension.[17] He advertised in The Era that he was 'now prepared to negotiate engagements with Dramatic artists for the Theatre Royal, Cape Town'.[18] His London agent was Henry Butler, 21, Bow- street, also associated with Henry Jameson Turner.[19] A brief journalistic battled took place. A Cape Town correspondent of The Era, probably in the minority, was less than complimentary about Mr Parry's performances though he favoured those of Mrs Parry. On the same page Harry Fraser, one of Parry's actors, challenged his plans to recruit professional players from England saying that the heat in summer was oppressive, the money was poor and opportunities were limited.[20] Parry defended his reputation in the following week's edition. He referred to his previous three year commitment to South Africa, to the quality of the theatre he had built and to his investment in the English actors whose fares he paid to come to South Africa.[4]

On 19 February 1861, several of Parry's players, Mrs Clara Tellett, Mr & Mrs W. Bland & Louisa Bland, Thomas Brazier, James Leffier and John Howard, set sail from Bristol with Captain Ferguson on the barque "Chevy Chase" bound for Cape Town. After 6,000 tedious miles and nearly three months, they arrived safe and well on 7 May. The following week the theatre opened.[21]

From 1861 until 1863 Parry and his first professional company, the Royal Alfred Dramatic Club, now reunited with the Cape Town Dramatic Club, utilized the Theatre Royal's stage.[16] The Era's correspondent reported that "the success of Mr. Sefton Parry's Company at the Theatre Royal here has been considerable, and we should think, judging from the crowded houses, that Mr. P. must be well satisfied with the financial prospects of his undertaking. Mr. Parry's Low Comedy is exceedingly good and his characters are invariably hits. The Theatre is really a blessing to us, for Cape Town is awfully dull, and we are glad to think that Mr. Parry's enterprise is meeting with the reward he so well deserves. The Drama at the Cape of Good Hope has never before been so well represented in Africa as it has been during the last three or four months". Mrs Clarissa Tellett was a great favourite with the audiences, and even more so with Captain Ferguson whom she married.[22]

Shuter Bland, a well known British stage manager, was part of the Sefton Parry company from 1861 to 1862 and participated in 50 productions between May and November. He accompanied the three-month tour to Port Elizabeth in 1862 [23] where Parry took on the lease of the White's Road Theatre. Parry opened with Planche's Grist to the Mill on 2 June.[24] The rest of the Bland family were still in the company.[25]

The following year, 1863, Parry wound up his Cape Town activities and then went on to Natal to close down the Port Elizabeth theatre. After Parry left Cape Town, Mrs Tellett took over the management of the Theatre Royal, but was not successful. Cape playgoers favoured talent from England and she was hampered by a serious shortage of professional actors. It closed before the end of the year.[26][27]

The Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance (ESAT) describes Sefton Parry as the first of several strong personalities from England and Australia who helped establish professional theatre in South Africa.[5][28]

Despite the passing of the Theatres Act 1843 over twenty years earlier that broke the monopoly of the patent theatres, no new theatre had been added to the places of entertainment in central London until Parry built, upon the site of an old coach-house and stables, the first of his central London theatres, called, after the thoroughfare in which it was situated, the Holborn Theatre. It opened on 6 October 1866 with Dion Boucicault's drama, specially written for the occasion, The Flying Scud, with a real horse and George Belmore as Nat Gosling the old jockey, was a great success. Parry remained lessee of the house until 1872. It burnt down on 4 July 1880, and the First Avenue Hotel later stood on the site.[33]

In 1868 he built on a portion of the ground of Old Lyon's Inn in Newcastle Street, Strand, a house which he christened the Globe Theatre with seating for about 1500. It opened on 28 November 1868 with H. J. Byron's comedy, Cyril's Success. No other piece of much mark was produced during Parry's management there, which lasted until 1871.[34]

Parry also built the New Theatre Royal, Hull which he opened on 27 November 1871 with a production by his own company of the Post Boy by H. T. Craven and Tom Taylor, The Ticket of Leave Man. Parry played the lead in both plays.[35]

In early 1880, Parry, recovering from a severe attack of paralysis, started planning his next theatre, to be called The Royal Avenue, at the corner of Craven Street and Northumberland Avenue, facing the Thames.[36] This opened on 11 March 1882, with Jacques Offenbach's opera Madame Favart, in which Florence St. John took the title rôle. The lessee was Mr. Edmund Burke and the manager, M. Marius.[37] The seating capacity was about 1300.

His final construction was the Prince of Wales Theatre in Southampton which he opened in June 1883. The plan of the building was similar to that of his Globe Theatre in London and the Theatre Royal in Hull. Parry described it as the best and most convenient he had ever erected.[38][39]