Record

Performance TitleSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts - 'From Sea to Sea: A Pageant Play of SPG History 1701-1935'
Performance Date4 July 1935
Performance DayThursday
Main PerformersVincent Barton,
Victor Nadhur,
Katherine Herbert,
Frank Wheatley,
Joan Cummine Fyfe,
J E Rogers,
B C Boulter,
A G Green,
Bernard Turner,
G H Taylor,
J W Wyant,
C V Rowe,
Henry Baehr,
George Oliver,
Elizabeth Dampier Child,
E F Curtis,
C A Gregory,
J H Clark,
W R Dale,
J H Norton,
Marion H Dunell,
Noel Kynaston Gaskell,
J H Datson,
J C V Durell,
D Keeley,
R Tatum,
W J Simmons,
W H Perry,
J G Sparkes,
M Bennett,
G Bennett,
C A Charlwood Turner,
T George,
Thelma M Smith,
W Oakley,
Vera Baker,
L Pearson,
John F Elkington,
Margaret Forman,
Frank Wheatley,
A Body,
H J Reading,
C E Curwen,
J Spikins,
Hugh G L Roberts,
Arthur F Frayling,
Thiel Page Dancing School, Dulwich,
1st Latimer Girl Guides,
St. Clement's Girls Club, Notting Hill
Orchestra or BandMiss Rosabel Watson's Orchestra
ConductorsRosabel Watson,
Robert Ashfield - Choir Director,
Muriel Venables - Choir Leader
Set List'From Sea To Sea' - A Pageant Play, Rosamund Essex,
'Imperial March', Elgar (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'Fanfare', Ernest Bullock (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'Recitative', Ernest Bullock (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'King's Hunting Jigg', John Bull (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'Sellinger's Roun',: William Byrd (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'The Icefield', Ole Olsen (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'Marche Solemnel', Tchaikovsky (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra),
'Processional March', Elgar (Rosabel Watson's Orchestra)
Performance Notes"The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel have erred on the side of modesty in producing their pageant-play From Sea to Sea. Their own distinguished history would have provided abundance of heroic episodes withour extraneous aid; but in their care to depict with accuracy the religious rites of many heathen peoples, they have sometimes omitted to mention their own part in conversion.
They have also been carried away, it may be supposed, by the word 'pageant', which by long prescription is taken to mean, 'a performance including Queen Elizabeth.' Now Queen Elizabeth died a century before S.P.G. was founded; but in she has to come, with nothing to do but receive from Sir Walter Raleigh a missionary subscription in coin of her successor Charles II.
When the pageant does reach its proper subject-matter it becomes rich in various suggestion. The thread of Christian faith winds its way through many lands and peoples - from Borneo to the gold digging, from the Equator to the Aurora Borealis, from Mandarins to (apparently) golliwogs. The performance is sustained by the calm and ritual singing of an accomplished choir, which itself plays a finely spectacular part in the closing tableau. Besides the immediately didactic side of missionary work, the pageant touches effectively upon the emancipation of negro slaves, the healing of the sick in India, and the sufferings of English loyalists in North America during the War of Independence. Most memorable of the visual effects are the wild dance of the African witch-doctor, the uplifting of innumerable suppliant arms at the close, and the looming display of the emblems of the Passion, in portentous light and shadow, with which the pageant begins."
(5 July 1935, The Times, page 12)
Related Archival MaterialProgramme (RAHE/1/1935/44)
Catalogue
Reference NumberTitleDate
RAHE/1/1935/44Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts - 'From Sea to Sea', a Pageant Play of SPG History 1701-19354-6 July 1935
Work
Ref NoTitleNo of Performances
OwnahowtiezifahSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts - 'From Sea to Sea: A Pageant Play of SPG History 1701-1935'3
Performers
CodeName of Performer(s)
DS/UK/429United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG); 1701-; British and Irish Christain organisation
DS/UK/23483Aeolian Ladies' Orchestra (1886)
DS/UK/3381Watson; Rosabel (24 June 1865-5 October 1959); British double bass player and conductor
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