Lola too sultry for Sunderland

Mar 26 2008 by David Whetstone, The Journal

A racy lady is drawing audiences to village halls in the region, as David Whetstone explains.

THE sizzle of scandal has been warming up village halls in Northumberland and farther afield, belying the assumption that theatre companies play safe out in the sticks.

Following in the footsteps of plays such as Get Up And Tie Your Fingers, a tough tale of North East fish filleting folk, comes something altogether racier – The Legend of Lola Montez.

Lola was quite a girl, according to Gillian Hambleton, director of the play and also of Northumberland Theatre Company.

“I hadn’t heard of her but in the 1850s she was as famous as Queen Victoria. She had an affair with the King of Bavaria and brought down the government.

“He was so besotted by her that she got him to sack his generals and eventually, when the whole country was up in arms, he lost his crown.”

Gillian says Lola was also the mistress of composer Franz Liszt. “She did get around a bit.

“She styled herself as a Spanish dancer and also toured America and Australia.

“She had a lot of amazing fans who followed her around and they would buy Lola cigars and other goodies. She was into merchandising long before it became fashionable.”

Gillian first learned about Lola from the Irish playwright Sylvia Cullen, who had written an earlier show for the Alnwick-based theatre company.

Sylvia visited Alnwick a few years ago to see biennial Pride of Place theatre festival which showcases the work of rural touring companies (and which is on again in Alnwick from April 3-5).

Sylvia, coming from rural Ireland, said she knew exactly what village hall audiences wanted and produced Bedazzled, which was a success for the Northumberland company.

Gillian recalls: “I said to her, ‘What else is interesting you at the moment’? She said, ‘I’ve just come across this amazing woman called Lola Montez and I’d like to write about her because it fits with the current cult of celebrity’.

“There were all these stories about Britney [Spears] and others and Lola’s story shows that it isn’t just a 21st Century phenomenon.”

According to Gillian, the exotic Spanish dancer who was Lola Montez entered the world as plain Eliza Gilbert in Ireland.

For more details I hare off to Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia whose contents have to be treated with some caution, but whose entry on Lola is satisfyingly detailed.

There’s even a painting of her, looking bright eyed and very well turned out.

It states that she was born to a 15-year-old mum and a soldier who died of cholera shortly after taking the family to India. Eliza’s mum married again and her new husband decided a British education was what the girl needed.

But Eliza was not a good pupil. Reportedly she stuck flowers in an old man’s wig in church and ran through the streets naked – all good training for a career in the public eye.

According to the Wikipedia account, at the age of 10 Eliza was sent to Sunderland to stay at a boarding house run by her stepfather’s sister.

A teacher, Mr Grant, commented on the “excessive beauty” of her eyes and her air of “haughty ease”. But he added: “The violence and obstinacy of her temper gave too frequent cause of painful anxiety to her good kind aunt.”

Eliza stayed a year, eloped at the age of 16 with a soldier, Thomas James, and ended up in Calcutta where the couple separated.

There she reinvented herself as a Spanish dancer and made her London debut as Lola Montez in 1843. It would have gone swimmingly but someone recognised her as Mrs James and scandal ensued. She left for the Continent, meeting Liszt in Paris and catching the eye of Ludwig I of Bavaria after arriving in Munich.

There is a story – which Wikipedia can’t resist repeating, even though they admit it is unsubstantiated, and neither can I – that the King asked Lola in public if her bosom was real, and she ripped off her garments to provide him with the evidence he needed.

It doesn’t sound wholly unlikely. But if Ludwig was smitten, his subjects were not, finding Lola’s temper unpalatable.

It didn’t end well for Lola. She died in the United States at the age of 39 and is buried in Brooklyn.

You can understand why Sylvia Cullen was intrigued by the story of this fellow countrywoman. You can also understand why London actress Clare Barrett is delighted to be making her NTC debut in the role.

“I have been enjoying it very much, as I’m sure you can imagine,” says 31-year-old Clare. “It is a phenomenal part to be playing.

“She was so famous in her day but little known now, although one or two things survive. There’s a saying, ‘What Lola wants, Lola gets’, which apparently comes from her.”

Fortuitously, a couple of Lola biographies came out recently which enabled those involved with the play to find out a little more about the woman. One of these, by James Morton, is called Lola Montez: Her Life and Conquests.

It is a tale all too recognisable today when it is possible to be famous for being famous and get rich at the same time.

In the NTC telling of her life, we meet Lola’s mother and grandmother. It is left to the outnumbered men in the cast to play her many fawning suitors and admirers.

You can see The Legend of Lola Montez tonight at Middlesbrough Town Hall Crypt (01642 815181), tomorrow at Longhirst Village Hall, Northumberland (01670 790764), on Saturday at The Maltings, Berwick (01289 330999), on April 1 and 2 at The Round, Newcastle (0191 260-5605) and on April 4 at Alnwick Town Hall as part of the Pride of Place festival, Further Upstix (01665 510785).

For more details visit www.alnwickplayhouse.co.uk or www.prideofplace.org.uk