Splinters : Cross-Dressing Ex-Servicemen on the Interwar Stage

Abstract

This article will examine how a series of theatrical shows which starred casts of cross-dressing ex-servicemen achieved critical and commercial popularity in interwar Britain despite increased cultural anxieties about the links between gender variance and transgressive acts, behaviours, and categories of identity. Prior to this study, historians have researched wartime concert parties where servicemen cross-dressed for each other's entertainment, but scant attention has been given to the popular phenomenon of ex-servicemen who performed cross-dressing revues for the general public. Staging revues on the home front exposed cross-dressing ex-servicemen to new forms of spectatorship: the theatregoing public, arts criticism in the press, and state censorship. This article will analyse these dynamics for the first time through an investigation of the First World War troupe Les Rouges et Noirs, who popularized the subgenre of veterans' cross-dressing revues with their debut production Splinters (1918). Critics commended the company's contribution to the war effort while also lauding the troupe for their entertainment value and 'bewitching' feminine mimicry. Some observers, like the Lord Chamberlain, found Les Rouges' cross-dressing troubling, but these views were in the minority and did not seriously hinder the performers' success. When carried out temporarily in a performative setting by artists who presented a skilful and beguiling representation of femininity, and whose status as ex-servicemen helped to dispel suspicions of immorality, cross-dressing could be a source of great pleasure, even as it constituted a source of cultural anxiety in other contexts.