Major Warton

Major Warton (fl 1880s-1890s) was a British military officer, cricketer and amateur singer.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Warton was the manager of the first English cricket team to play two matches (later designated "tests") against a South African team in South Africa in 1888-9, a team led by C. Aubrey Smith, who would later become famous as a stage and film actor.

On 24 December of that year the members of the team attended and took part in a "smoking concert" held in their honour in the Exhibition Theatre, Cape Town. The concert had two parts, first a Christy Minstrel show, that included a comic ditty called "The Man that Struck O'Hara". The second half saw songs by local celebrities such as Tom Graham, a talk on public entertainers by Robert Baden-Powell, as well as other team members, such as Warton himself and the popular bowler Johnny Briggs. The critic and chronicler of theatre in the Cape, D.C. Boonzaier, was himself involved in the event, helping to blacken the faces of the performers in the Christy show.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Briggs_(cricketer)

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman, 1928. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel I: 1652-1855. Pretoria: J.H. de Bussy. [1]: pp.

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp.

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