In her meticulously researched study of the employment of children in the London theatre industry during the nineteenth century (focused for the most part on the 1870s and 1880s), Varty brings together precise references to social history, legislation and theatre history to illuminate our understanding of performance during the period: ‘that children made a major contribution to the theatre during the nineteenth century is not in dispute. But the reasons why they maintained a powerful theatrical appeal during this era must still be explored’ (p. 9). Her stimulating study reveals how understandings of theatre and its creation of stage fairylands enabled the industry to evade current thinking about, and legal practices focused on, children, childhood and working conditions. Its emphasis on constructs of the child performer, on the branding strategies created by theatrical entrepreneurs and on the power of the press does much to dispel the myths of the nineteenth-century stage child, whose legacy endures in the undeniably appealing images and narratives of fairylike children enthusiastically embracing their work on the stage as play, and the continuing popularity and production of key texts such as Alice in Wonderland. Varty also fills in the stories of theatrical celebrities’ childhood stage careers, in particular that of Minnie Terry (pp. 58–62), readjusting the lens through which we have understood key performers from the late nineteenth century and presenting these early experiences of performance as more than a brief piece of interesting biographical material. Constructs of femininity are (perhaps inevitably) a spectral presence throughout the study. On occasions – for example in the section on The Manager's Daughter (p. 120) – it seemed that further acknowledgement was needed, in spite of this area not being the focus of the study. Nonetheless, this is an important work that fills in gaps in the theatre history of a period whose output has understandably tended to foreground the visual, and to take the child performer as a part of that visual language.

Waters offers a history of representations of black characters and slavery on the British (London) stage, focusing on the period from 1830 to 1860. Tracing representations through key texts, performers and productions, including Oroonoko and Othello, Ira Aldridge, Charles Mathews, the Jim Crow craze, minstrelsy and the Uncle Tom plays, she brings together stereotypes and insightfully reads their interrelationships and their social and historical contexts. Waters concedes in the Afterword that she makes no claim to ‘know precisely how such images were received, rejected or accepted by their audiences’ and that the ‘great range of response’ they would have provoked is, ‘at this historical remove, simply unknowable’ (p. 187). I agree, to an extent, but there were significant questions about popular theatre and reception raised that would have benefited from more extensive attention: the combination of literary analysis and theatre history is not always managed successfully, and I was unsure at times of its methodological parameters and approach. Much detail was offered on the plots and sources of the case studies, but less on what spectators might have been familiar with (and such information is available). The Surrey Theatre's reputation for (often nautical) melodrama was identified, but there was less on other venues. The ‘long historical memory of popular theatre’ (p. 123) is identified, but amidst these questions I am not sure it was always fully accounted for.

One of the study's key strengths is its focus on a period when theatre reigned as the popular entertainment form. However, the critical understanding of popular culture on which the study is founded remained unclear. At times the products, conventions and audiences of popular theatre were seemingly dismissed and value judgements made. The ‘minor by-play with dogs’ in Astley's version of Uncle Tom is presented as inconsequential (p. 157). Arguably, the dogs were a significant factor in audiences’ readings of the visual language of theatre and that particular production, and may have opened out parallel discussions that would have enabled closer consideration of non-scripted, popular theatre conventions in line with the study's major area of investigation. Despite these reservations, the research and ideas Waters presents fill another gap in our understandings of nineteenth-century performance and cultural history.