[Five pictures relating to the Mercury Theatre with a photographic postcard of Sid Kay's Fellows, ca. 1946-ca. 1954]

PXD 1585

fonds

[ca. 1946-ca. 1954]

Graphic Materials, Drawings, Ephemera

9630923

5 drawings, 1 postcard - gouache on board, watercolor on paper, printed card

Kay, Sydney John (1906 - 1970). Born in Germany as Kurt Kaiser, Kay studied engineering in Berlin, where in 1927 he became a member of the Jewish-German showband, the Weintraub Syncopators. With this leading German jazz group he appeared in the film The Blue Angel, accompanying Marlene Dietrich. As a victim of the racist policy of the Nazis, he had to leave Germany in 1933 and went on a world tour with the Weintraubs. Kaiser played trombone, clarinet, saxophone and wrote arrangements for the group. In 1937 they arrived in Australia and decided to stay. Kaiser settled in Sydney and changed his name by deed poll to Sydney John Kay.
After the beginning of the war he and other members of the band were interned as enemy aliens. As a consequence the Weintraub Syncopators was dissolved. After his release, Kay became musical arranger for the Colgate-Palmolive radio unit and wrote musical scores for documentary and feature films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He ran the Theatre for Children in Sydney (1944-45), which was founded by Rosemarie Benjamin in 1939. In 1946 Kay, Peter Finch, Allan Ashbolt, Colin Scrimgeour and John Wiltshire founded the Mercury Theatre. Kay was Managing Director ‘the inspiration, catalyst, imagination and driving force’, while Finch was ‘its director, its front man and its star’.
The Mercury’s first performances were delivered to critical acclaim at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music on 16 and 17 July 1946 consisted of three one act plays, Nikolai Gogol’s Diamond Cuts Diamond; Heinrich von Kleist’s The Broken Pitcher; and Lope de Vega Carpio’s The Pastrybaker. All with sets by William Constable, painted sets by Margaret Olley and music by Sydney John Kay. Associated with the theatre were a Mercury Club and Mercury Theatre School, located in Phillip Street near Circular Quay, where classes and student productions were staged.
However, the group could not find suitable premises for productions and in 1947 Mercury Mobile Players were formed to take productions to factories, schools, hospitals and public halls, using a folding stage and proscenium designed by Kay. While touring Australia in 1948 Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh saw a production, starring Finch, of The Imaginary Invalid, at O’Brien’s Glass Factory in Marrickville. Olivier himself called the Mercury the most exciting thing he had seen in theatre for years and proclaimed his immense admiration of the idea of taking theatre to the workplace. The Oliviers came backstage, became friends with Finch and advised him to come to London. He and his wife Tamara has been planning such a move and in September 1948 they left Sydney. The Mercury closed in 1949.
Key revived the Mercury in 1952. The sole remaining director, he leased the St James Hall and in less that two years the Mercury Theatre staged 29 plays and gave 505 performances of plays by Shakespeare, Strindberg Shaw, Masefield, Terence Rattigan, Maxwell Anderson and Jean Anouilh and other mixing modern, contemporary and classic. But due to financial problems had to close it in late 1953. From 1955 until his death in 1970 he worked in London as a composer-arranger.
Reference: Library acquistion file

From the estate of Sydney John Kay the works passed by descent to son, Anthony Kay, who died in 2018. The current vendors are co-executors of Tony Kay’s estate.

Five works on paper relating to the Mercury Theatre with a photographic postcard of Sid Kay's Fellows, ca. 1946-ca. 1954. Includes three works, gouache on board, by William Constable (1906-1989) and two watercolours, by Edward Heffernan (1912-92), together with a postcard sent to Sydney John Kay, 1954. The pictures by Constable and Heffernan are documentary images of moments in the lives of actors, scenes, sets and productions associated with the Mercury. Constable was set designer for the Mercury, and three of the works are painted images of the sets he designed. The two works by Heffernan depict theatrical scenes, presumably from the Mercury. The Pastrybaker was performed at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on 16/17 July 1946; and the other related works are signed ‘Constable’ or ‘Constable’46’. Heffernan’s works must date from before 1953, when the Mercury Theatre closed.

In copyright: Life of artist plus 70 years.
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales