Gags and Greasepaint

This volume is a paean to the “Revue”, the “Fit-Up” and the fifty or more travelling roadshows which traversed the roads of Ireland during the heyday of the “fit-ups”, the decades prior to the Second World War. This book is a personal memoir of one of the “goddesses” of Irish repertory theatre―Vic (Victoria Loving)―the woman known as the “Sequin Queen”―as recounted by her granddaughter, one of the last of these travelling artistes. It is a celebration of Ireland’s “curtain up”, and the “five-and-nine”, the fairground barker and the circus tober. It is a hymn to the artist whose home was the road and whose stage-wing voices lie hidden in the boarded-up hall and the abandoned outhouse. Listen up!―for one last garish display of the paint-glow, one final tread of the magic footboard.

The present volume is a second edition.