Le Roy and Duret Company

The Le Roy and Duret Company is name of a British theatrical company constituted and active in Cape Town between 1866 and 1868.

Also referred to as Le Roy and Duret, Leroy and Duret, Le Roy-Duret Company, Leroy's Original Company, Leroy's Company or Le Roy's Company. Also found inverted here and there, i.e. Duret and Le Roy, etc.

The company

The company was named after and led by J.H. le Roy and Madame Duret (possibly his wife, and the leading actress for the company), and formed in Cape Town from local performers when the two arrived (probably from Port Elizabeth) in 1866. They leased and had renovated the Harrington Street Theatre (Theatre Royal and there (as well as select other venues) presented a large number of over the course of four "seasons" till May 1876, when Le Roy left for England to engage new performers. In the intervening season Madame Duret is the sole lessee of the theatre in Cape Town, and the works are fewer.

On Le Roy's return in September 1867, the company was reconstituted and strengthened by the addition of the new players, and went on to perform a few more seasons until 1869, when they finally depart from the Cape.

The players and other people involved with the company over the course of the approximately four years they worked in the Cape included

South African Performances

First season (1866)

This season ran from January to September of 1866 in the Harrington Street Theatre, Cape Town, and included performances of Lucrezia Borgia (Weston), Duel in the Dark (Coyne), The Soldier's Daughter (Cherry), Hunting a Turtle (Selby), Fazio, or The Italian Wife's Revenge (Milman), The Creole (), The Four Sisters, or Woman's Worth and Woman's Wrongs (Bernard), Medea (Euripides), Turn Him Out (), The Momentous Question, or Woman's Devotion (), Captain Charlotte, or Hearts and Trumpt (Stirling), The Lady of Lyons (), The Married Rake (Selby), [[]] (), [[]] (), [[]] (), [[]] (),

Second season

1866: The company did The Mutiny at the Nore (Jerrold), On the Sly (Morton) and what is billed as a "Great Comic Shadow Pantomime, sensation from the Crystal Palace". (Possibly a reference to something like the 1861 shadow pantomime put on by Nelson Lee in the Crystal Palace, London[1])

Third season

1867: The company participated in a Great Promenade Concert, a charity event for the Good Hope Lodge, held in the Good Hope Gardens on 7 February, which included a performance of their "celebrated Shadow Pantomime as lately produced at the Theatre Royal". The concert also involved the 9th Regimentand the military band led by Signor Bonicoli.

1867: The company also participated in two performances of a Benefit Performance for the Somerset Hospital in Cape Town (4 and 5 March), arranged by the officers of the 9th Regiment in the Theatre Royal.

Other plays put on by the company in 1867 include: A Dead Shot (Buckstone), Governor von Brute, or Things as They Might Have Been (Mollan),

Sources

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp. 201-242. (Cites William Groom, 1899-1901 to a large extent.)

Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman. 2017. Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America. University of Pittsburgh Press[2]

https://newspaperarchive.com/evening-star-and-dial-jan-15-1861-p-1/

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