‘Variations on a scale’: British Music Hall and instances of adaptation as performance

Abstract

This article explores and extends the capacity of the framework of inclusion and exclusion as adhered to and cultivated by the core of the field of adaptation studies. Investigating the focus on the textual, this article is a consideration of the role and position of the textual in the discourse of adaptation studies before considering three different types of adaptation in performance in Victorian Music Hall where the adaptation of the textual as well as the non-textual form a common base for a variety, if not majority, of performances. Considering popular performance outside of the confines of the theatre offers examples of adaptations based on textualities and those beyond textualities as well as a combination of the two. Examples analysed include the singer Marie Lloyd, who is probably most widely known as a Music Hall star outside of the confines of theatre history, the magician William Elsworth Robinson aka Chung Ling Soo and monkey-man Harvey Teasdale. Such opening-up of adaptation studies’ textual focus will subsequently allow a flexing, a keeping supple of any framework of inclusion and exclusion constructed.