Bloom’s Music Hall Player Orla [Adrian Joyner]

A CLUB is offering the chance to step back in time after a performance troupe uncovered a series of Victorian tunes once played in its music hall.

The Mildmay Club, a historic working men’s venue based in Newington Green, will play host to a special music hall concert on September 10.

Founded in 1888, members of the club recently discovered a “treasure trove” of documents dating back to its earliest years during a recent renovation – uncovering a series of music hall concert programmes once performed in the building.

Clive

According to musician Alec Dunnachie, these “yellowing papers” provide “fascinating clues to the popular songs our ancestors knew and loved”.

Along with his troop, Bloom’s Music Hall Players, Mr Dunnachie will be reviving some of these songs and singing them again in the hall where they were originally performed.

Music hall was a form of theatrical entertainment popular in the Victorian era.

“Music hall’s heyday would be 1850 to the First World War – it is generally accepted as a precursor of modern pop music,” Mr Dunnachie said.

Alec

“It’s contemporary music for the industrial revolution. As more and more people came into the city, the population increased massively. They lived in really poor accommodation. Music hall was entertainment for them: it was the first form of mass entertainment.

“The First World War killed it, with jazz and later the advent of TV, radio and other forms of mass entertainment elbowed it out of the way. In a music hall back in the day, the actual entertainment was a bit of a sideshow: people would be sitting round chatting each other up, doing deals, getting out of the cold.

Cathy

“Music hall is about having rapport with the audience: it doesn’t work if they don’t sing along. It was very much a live experience, an intimate experience. Heckling would have happened too.

“All that’s left of it today is the modern stand-up comic. In music hall, a comic singer might sing a song, but the patter was a thing. Over time, the music went but the patter became stand-up comedy.”