Village Squire, 1977-07, Page 5been invited to go to Charlottetown for the "world premiere"
of the show and he was well prepared for it. He'd prepared a
piece on the history of the Dumbells and went even farther
back to explore the roots from which the troupe came. He was
fretting a little about whether or not the Festival would be
able to come up with adequate replacements for some of the
masters of the original Dumbells, men like Ross Hamilton,
who played many of the female parts in the all male troupe
with his high falsetto voice.
He protests that his stroke has made things hard for him to
remember, but he spins tales about the adventures of the
Dumbells as if it were yesterday.
The Dumbells grew out of the insignia of the Canadian
Third Division, a black dumbell on a French gray patch. The
group was originally formed to entertain troops in that
division and adopted the name. World War I, he recalls, was
a singing war. When the war broke out the British took it in a
lighthearted way with irreverent songs like Alfred Lester's
"Conscientious Objectors' Lament" sung in a doleful tone.
The British soldiers went into battle singing songs from the
island nation's music halls.
It was natural then that groups would be formed to
entertain the troops. It was a practice that had been going on
since Henry V made an excursion into Northern France in
1415-1420 and took along troubadours. musicians and actors.
The kind of humour had developed in the English Music
Halls. The music halls had evolved from the village pubs
which had become the centre of social life in their
communities. People in the pubs entertained each other with
songs. recitations and magic. The more progressive publicans
expanded by building halls and hiring professional
entertainers. The entertainment became so popular that it
was moved out of the pubs and into regular theatres.
The English stage presentations were changed radically
after a man named Joe Grimaldi arrived in London from Italy
and produced a show at London's Drury Lane Theatre which
electrified the nation. It was a new kind of humour, much
more lively than the old British shows. and a new style was
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/JULY 1977. PG. 3.