Empire Picture and Variety Theatre, Montrose

The Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review; and Forfar and Kincardineshire Advertiser, Friday 29 September 1922, advertised at the Empire Picture and Variety Theatre, Montrose, on Monday 2 October and during the week, ‘Enormous Attraction. Personal Visit of the Eminent Actress, Miss Cissie Langley, and her London Company in Dramatic Playlets’: Monday and Tuesday, Vengeance of Li Fang Foo; Wednesday and first house Saturday, Nurse Cavell, the Martyr (‘see how this Brave Nurse sacrificed her Life for Britain’); Thursday only, Damaged Goods, Shame, or A Tainted Woman; Friday, Only a Dream; second house Saturday, Who is the Man. The company included Cissie Langley, Laurence Langley, James Laurie and Wyndham Clare.

The Montrose, Arbroath and Brechin Review, and the Forfar and Kincardineshire Advertiser, both Friday 29 June 1923, reported that at the Empire Picture and Variety Theatre, Montrose, the following week Miss Emily Florence and her company would present a different play each night, including on Saturday [7 July] ‘the great London successful drama by Reginald March, “The Black Sheep of the Family”‘. Similarly, a news report in the Montrose Standard, 29 June 1923, referred to The Black Sheep of the Family as ‘the great successful London drama, by Reginald March’. However, an advertisement in the same issue of the latter newspaper referred to The Black Sheep of the Family as ‘The Latest London Success by Reginald Lynoch … Full of Sensation and Dramatic Interest’. Neither Reginald March nor Reginald Lynoch is listed in Allardyce Nicoll, British Drama 1900-1930. Whether the name(s) quoted were that of the author or of an actor who had starred in the play, news reports of their London success should be found via the British Newspaper Archive. But the BNA has no other references to a Reginald March or Lynoch in connection with the play. The authorship of the play performed by Emily Florence and her company is therefore uncertain, although no other play with the same title was licensed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.