Staging Jutland

‘The only objection to this melodrama is that it deals with sailors and the battle of Jutland … the introduction of the Jutland battle and its heroism into a tawdry melodrama annoys one’ (LCP 1916/21) wrote George S. Street, the Lord Chamberlain’s Examiner of Plays, on 2 September 1916. He was reviewing Mother’s Sailor Boy, a new melodrama to be performed at the Salford Hippodrome a week later. Written and staged only three months after the battle of Jutland, Mother’s Sailor Boy was the first in a number of theatrical productions to respond to and represent the battle of Jutland. Other performances included Pictures of the Year at the King’s Theatre, Southsea on 1 January 1917 which opened with verses about the battle, La Politesse at Wyndham’s in June 1918, and most remarkably the June 1917 production Jack Ashore at Collins’ Music Hall performed by ‘the Jutland Boys’, a group of discharged sailors who had taken part in the battle.

This paper takes up the conference theme of the ‘impact of the war at sea on the ‘Home Front’ by considering the alternate meaning of ‘theatre of war’. Theatrical productions which ‘staged’ Jutland in different ways will be examined as cultural artefacts of the battle and it will be suggested that they function in part as performed memorials. By examining critical and popular reception of these works moreover the paper will suggest that we can gain new insights into contemporary attitudes towards the battle as it developed in the cultural imagination.