When Sydney Liked its Entertainment "Free and Easy"

WHEN SYDNEY LIKED ITS ENTERTAINMENT "FREE AND EASY"

By ISADORE BRODSKY

Somewhere in the lineage of entertainment, in the long ago before revue, variety and vaudeville, we can seek wistfully for the forerunner of music halls and find it in the old-fashioned tavern of our town, where drink and song were blended in the Free and Easy.

One hundred years ago in Sydney, theatre flourished on formal lines at the Royal Victoria, in Pitt St., about midway between King and Market Streets on the western side, but this theatre held no monopoly on entertainment, as can be shown by the number of Free and Easys which countered with their attractions.

Names from the past

The Bull and Mouth was not more than a hundred paces from the Old Vic, on the Farmer's corner of today, while other well-patronised contemporaries were the Black Boy Inn, in George St., The Spread Eagle and the Sir Maurice O'Connell in Elizabeth St., The Three Tuns and Brougham Taverns, The Hamburgh, the Sportsman's Arms, the Crown and Kettle, and some whose locations are known but whose names have unfortunately perished.

The swinging sign at the entrance to these Free and Easys was an index of their go-as-you-please character, one that assured satisfaction to so many of varying tastes, especially when a common level of enthusiasm had been induced by ale and wines.

Ex-pugilist mine host

Ned Bitton, who kept The Spread Eagle, also known as The Bush Tavern, was an old retired prizefighter who had picturesquely exchanged his belligerent stance for the more pleasing one of a boniface, complete with a vest of velvet decorated with chains and seals.

One end of his low weatherboard building had a concert hall with a stage at one end. Tables were arranged in rows, with passages to permit the free circulation of waiters, and those seated at the tables were expected to order their drinks, or at least a cigar, as a token of their bona fides and to make manifest their entitlement.

At Toogood's Rainbow Tavern (now the site of Proud's), long experience led to a short cut in this manoeuvring by the master of ceremonies.

On the stage for the performers sat a chairman who presided over them, and simultaneously set a standard of decorum for the audience.

If this allowed for a little breadth in interpretation, there could be no mistaking his attitude at the end of each item.

Loudly he would exclaim, "The waiter is in the room, gentlemen!"

William White's Crown and Kettle also insisted on the double standard, but the true Free and Easy was a much more homely matter. The selection of a chair man was left to chance, and he kept order at the long table flanked with forms by beating a tattoo with an auctioneer's gavel. He needed it to enforce his authority.

On Saturdays men gathered at their favorite Free and Easy at an early hour, and, about an hour before noon, tables were spread with dishes of cold meat, radishes, pickles, cheese, and bread and butter.

By the evening, patrons were well fortified with food and drink, and then they linked arms and went into the concert-room, where there was only one paid performer, the pianist.

Lack of voice no handicap

"I never heard good vocalism in any of these concert-rooms," says an old-timer, "but those who sang, or attempted to sing, were duly applauded."

The stranger was considered a good mark for a turn, and siege was laid to him for his offering just when he had "a wee drap in his ee".

Sometimes the choice fell on one who had gone too far with his libations. . . . "They then consider themselves equal to anything ... if they can't sing they frequently shout", which served the joyful purpose of the occasion.

The over-cheerful and casual nature of these entertainments gradually gave way to careful organisation, because it could be seen that a little planning would improve the takings. The opportunity was too good to be missed by the mercenary.

Clark's Sportsman's Arms and the Bull and Mouth brought out day bills to enumerate some of the attractions, and the Bull and Mouth gingered its show by dressing its waitresses in

Oriental costumes. Result: Standing room only at the Bull and Mouth!

Bloomer suits for waitresses

In the first years of the 70's, Michael Hegarty came over from Melbourne and went a step further with a Cafe Chantant on the site of the old City Theatre in Market St., one door from the Crown and Anchor.

Michael had experimented tentatively with waitresses who "wore bloomer costumes", and had created a sensation with them in Melbourne until the outraged police came into the picture.

It is not known whether he produced the same results with his Sydney venture, but a chronicler says that "he did a roaring trade for a time", first in Market St. and later at the Queen's Theatre in York St.

Minstrelsy also became an authentic part of what grandfather and grandmother enjoyed in music hall and vaudeville, whether at the old Alhambra or the Haymarket, the Oxford, the old Tivoli or the National Amphitheatre.

Christy Minstrels were a straight out importation from the United States, where, in 1840, burnt cork appeared to gain something in its imitation of Negro antics.

Australian played part

An Australian, Crappen, had a small share in the development of this branch of the theatrical tradition, his part being the encouragement of "a tall, handsome, dark complexioned young

man . . . known as Christy".

Christy asked Crappen what he thought of Dan Rice and his Jump Jim Crow song, and Crappen said that he liked it.

Christy then went on to discuss the idea of grouping a crowd of young men, with their faces blackened, to sing, play, and dance.

Not long afterward he implemented the ideas thrashed out between the two men, and minstrelsy was born.

The first minstrels to appear in Australia — Christy never came — were the Bacchus Minstrels.

There were a dozen in the party, all instrumentalists, and they enlivened the 50's "playing to crowded houses".

In 1863 a Command Night for Sir John Young, Lady Young and Lady Taylour,

at the Mechanics' School of Arts in Pitt St., gave minstrelsy a new status in entertainment, and their items ranged from Hard Times and Blue Eyed Nelly to the Blacksmith's Chorus from II Trovatore, with an American Prize Jig and Come Into the Garden. Maud, for good measure.

Evolution in performances

The minstrels entered an even warmer phase of their evolution when Harry Rickards left the Opera House in York St. and crossed over to The Garrick with his Tivoli Minstrels.

Signalising the new venture of 1893, a crusade against the formal offerings of the Theatre Royal, Rickards "put on the conventional 'first part', introducing nigger minstrel end men".

"The company appeared in entirely new and rich costumes . . . the interlocutor and cornermen in their plush coats and vests look almost too dignified to descend to the ordinary minstrel funniments", ran a patronising critique.

New lustre to scene

In the good old summer time of 1895, the inimitable Charley Pope and Irving Sayles brought shining lustre to the Rickards firmament with performances that were more than skin deep, while another star in that same galaxy, George Chirgwin, more easily recalled as The White Eyed Kaffir, had had his earliest training as a member of a juvenile Christy Minstrel troupe.

Eugene Stratton was another of those who mastered the black techniques, refining the act with the sweetly sentimental Lily of Laguna, as many will re member, with Teddy Maas, Harry Rickards' son-in-law.

Maas can go back to the Tivoli's Harry Barrington, who dashed around before the curtain went up, in his capacity as stage manager, and then went on himself to play the part of interlocutor with that "why-does-the-chicken-cross-the-road" type

of theatrical confection.

Bert Warne, vaudevillian and raconteur, tells of a famous end man; Charlie Vaude, who got a top billing with Bill Verne.

All night to find name

"I was at the Empire at Broken Hill in 1907, and Croft Ridgeway was on the same program with Bill Bartington. The Adelaide Tivoli wanted a double, and Ridgeway-Partington got the job as Vaude and Verne.

"As a name for a turn, Ridgeway and Partington would never have done" . . . anxious friends sat up with them all night in a quest for a magic call board name.

"I've still got my bones," adds Bert, rather proudly, thinking back to the early and thrilling days of Brennan's National Amphitheatre.

And he particularly remembers when he was a confederate from the pit for Fred Curran, who put over the alliterative Sea Shells song.

Warne remembers, as most of us do, Porky Kearns, who made blackface history, using his tambourine for effective punctuation. And then there was Ward Lear, Ted Tutty and the Bovis brothers.

Famous site of Academy

For the connoisseur, it must be recorded that Fred Hiscocks had his Federal Minstrels at the Academy of Music some 20 years before Kearns, and nearly everybody knows that the academy stood where the Scandinavian Hotel wedded wine with song in 1866, and where the Tivoli was once a glittering landmark.

And so, by a piece of black magic, the Free and Easy and the Minstrels are united by time and place, at that wonderful, fabulous, old stand in Castlereagh St., and the stage ghosts may be laid to this day, in an eloquently silent little alleyway.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Black-face star Eugene Stratton

Irving Sayles, one of the early minstrels

Famous corner man, Porky Kearns.