1What remains of moving, performing bodies? How is embodied behaviour documented? How do movements contribute to the formation of a collective identity? And how are they historically and culturally regulated? Further, how do race, class and gender intersect with these regulations and weigh in the decision to archive some movements and disregard others? These intricate questions have generated rich, extensive debate amongst philosophers, cultural historians and scholars of performance, dance and theatre studies over the last three decades, and continue to do so. Michelle Granshaw intervenes in the debate from the position of a theatre historian, investigating variety theatre, a form of entertainment which was for a long time deemed illegitimate by the dominant classes, has left very few tangible traces behind and has received little critical attention so far. Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre analyses the role of mobility in the construction of the racial identity of Irish Americans from the end of the Civil War to the mid 1880s, that is the relatively brief period when variety theatre existed as a form of entertainment in its own right, distinct both from minstrelsy and vaudeville. The book focusses on the performance and entertainment practices of one specific community within the Irish diaspora—male, working-class, Catholics—and looks at the ways in which these performance practices came to define, support, or conversely impede the group’s physical and social mobility.

2Irish on the Move is structured around five micro-histories, all of which underline the pivotal role that mobility played in the construction of male, working-class Irish-American racial identity. Chapter One examines the emergence of the character of the Irish-American comic tramp on the variety stage alongside blackface, and in the context of the Panic of 1873. The economic depression saw three million people lose their jobs and resulted in a surge of mobility as people took to the roads in search of work. Blackface characters and Irish-American comic tramps were racialised in different, but not totally dissimilar ways at first. Reduced to mere bodily presences, they spoke very little—if at all—, and were defined by their common lack of body discipline. However, the comic tramp soon acquired a different status as he became more and more vocal. If its portrait as one always ready to launch into colourful stories drew on the stereotypical representation of the Irish as full of blarney, it nevertheless contributed to give substance to the character. Its increased prominence on the variety stage mirrored and helped strengthen the connection which was being made between the right to travel (for work or idleness) and whiteness. As Chapter Two argues, Irish-American mobility was also linked to the figure of the freedom fighter, who was simultaneously seen as a proponent of American democracy and a violent threat to social order. Here too Granshaw’s approach is dialectical: the stereotypical image of the Irish as violent was consolidated on stage, but performance nonetheless succeeded in recasting the Irish as valiant fighters capable of exporting American democratic values to other nations. The chapter pays close attention to the role played by theatre in revising the perception of the Molly Maguire secret society in the United States. The Molly Maguires were conversely influential in the construction of Irish-Americans as “mobile, social menace” (90), either through the spectacle which the public executions of some of the society’s members constituted, or the dramaturgies of mobility which it inspired. Whereas plot was all important in the dramaturgies relating to freedom fighters, for instance, sound was the structuring principle of variety afterpieces featuring “Mollies.” Chapter Three proposes a cultural history of the hibernicon, a form of entertainment which combined a moving panorama depicting Ireland’s scenic places with variety show, and which was especially popular in the mid-1870s. Like the moving panorama, the hibernicon had its root in British travel literature and relied on imagery that had been used to support colonial ideology. However, as Granshaw shows, the same imagery was used in hibernicons to support Irish nationalism instead. Songs, sketches, dances interfered with the linearity of travel narratives. Combined with the performative nature of the hibernicon, the fragmented structure of the narrative challenged accepted versions of the history of Ireland and encouraged action in the present. Besides imaginary journeys to the home country, hibernicons encouraged other forms of mobility as well: they thus turned out to be springboards for stardom for a significant number of vaudeville and musical comedy performers, for instance. Chapter Four looks at the off-stage mobility which hibernicons allowed and focuses on the partnership networks that touring companies established. The networks, especially those constituted by local Catholic parishes, proved vitally important for the consolidation of American-Irish identity. Parishes facilitated touring in providing a wide range of locations for hibernicon companies to perform in. They in turn benefited financially from this association as the sale of tickets boosted their fund-raising abilities. Chapter Five is dedicated to the study of pedestrianism, or walking matches, which managers introduced into variety performances. Irish pedestrian athletes and performers did not erase Irish-American stereotyping but transformed the image of Irish-American masculinity as they gained fame and social mobility. The chapter complements Chapter One in exposing how accepted, “correct” movements determined who belonged in the United States. It looks at the disciplining of both the performers’ and the spectators’ bodies and situates the domestication and demasculinization of variety theatre within the larger history of the regulation of urban space.

3Michelle Granshaw’s Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre sheds light on little-known performance practices of Catholic, Irish Americans in the second half of the nineteenth-century. For this alone, this book is a most welcome contribution to the field of Irish-American cultural history and to theatre studies. Extremely well documented and drawing on extensive and varied archival materials, Granshaw’s study focuses on live performance and on social groups who left very little behind. This is a book that takes popular entertainment seriously, historicizes it scrupulously, and offers compelling analyses of Irish performances on and off stage. Moreover, by giving centre stage to what has been kept out of the archive and by acknowledging and embracing the “holes” in the narrative of nineteenth-century American theatre histories, the book is not unlike the “fragmented performances” that it investigates and that, in the words of the author herself, “raise many more questions than they answer” (215). This is the sign of truly original and ground-breaking research.