Sir Philip Ben Greet - Lambeth Road, London, UK
Posted by: Groundspeak Regular Member Master Mariner
N 51° 29.758 W 000° 06.845
30U E 700318 N 5708930
This plaque is attached to a terrace house on the north west side of Lambeth Road.
Waymark Code: WMGN6Z
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/23/2013
Published By:Groundspeak Regular Member Ddraig Ddu
Views: 1

The London County Council plaque reads:

 


London County Council

Sir
Philip Ben
Greet
1857 - 1936
Actor-manager
lived here
1920 - 1936
 

 


Wikipedia tells about Ben Greet:

"Sir Philip Barling "Ben" Greet (24 September 1857–17 May 1936) was a Shakespearean actor, director, and impresario.

The younger son of Captain William Greet RN and his wife, Sarah Barling, Greet was born on board HMS Crocodile, a Royal Navy recruiting ship tied up at the Tower of London. He was educated at the Royal Naval School, New Cross. His parents planned to make him a naval officer or a clergyman, but instead he became a schoolmaster at a private school at Worthing. His brother was theatre manager William Greet.

Greet made his professional stage debut in 1883, playing Caius Lucius in Cymbeline. In 1886 he started staging open-air productions of the classic English stage repertory; his companies, called the Ben Greet Players, the Sign of the Cross Company, and the Woodland or Merry Woodland Players, toured Great Britain and the United States. Greet, along with William Poel, led a return to Shakespeare's original texts in simplified productions, in contrast to the often elaborate and heavily-edited presentations fashionable in their era. Greet did not limit his work to the Shakespeare canon, but staged a range of other dramas; his production of the morality play Everyman was acted for 35 years across Britain and America.

Greet toured North America with great success with his "Elizabethan Stage Society of England" from 1902 to 1914. The company included Sybil Thorndike and Sydney Greenstreet. He staged performances at Harvard University and in Theodore Roosevelt’s White House and was a mainstay of the Chautauqua Circuit. From 1914-18 he was director of the Old Vic Theatre in London, making that theatre a center for Shakespearean production. Later he concentrated on productions for London schoolchildren.

Greet was knighted in 1929.

In his four seasons at the Old Vic, Greet produced 35 plays, including 23 by Shakespeare, plus Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, Sheridan's The Rivals and The School for Scandal, the Medieval mystery play The Star of Bethlehem, and Everyman among other works.

He is commemorated by a blue plaque on the facade of 160 Lambeth Road, London, where he lived from 1920 until his death in 1936."

Blue Plaque managing agency: London County Council

Individual Recognized: Sir Philip Ben Greet

Physical Address:
Lambeth Road
London, United Kingdom


Web Address: [Web Link]

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