Samuel Coleridge Taylor: Crowned with Fame
“It is given but to few men in so short a time to create for themselves a position of such prominence on two continents…” Booker T. Washington, 1904
I use the term Crowned with Fame because it is the title of a play by Michael Ellis (with superb direction by Sue Pomeroy of later National Theatre fame under Sir Peter Hall), which was first produced by the Good Company at the Battersea Arts Centre in 1987 and then on a UK tour in February 1988. That tour included one performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford. It was a show I remember with delight: a genuine coming together of the man and his music. Sadly, after that tour the play sunk into theatrical oblivion — as many do — and is seldom listed on Ellis’s online credits.
Crowned with Fame unquestioningly inspired me to write more drama (I had two plays already under my belt, with one a minor success at the Edinburgh Fringe) and listen to more of Coleridge Taylor’s music: music that similarly inspired Sue Pomeroy to find out more about him. She has written:
“It was while working at the Croydon Warehouse Theatre as its Artistic Director that I came across Coleridge Taylor and his music. When I first heard about this extraordinary composer, I was somewhat confused. A composer who had lived in Croydon all his life? How was it I had never heard of him? A…
