User:Teblick/Harrigan and Hart (team)

Harrigan and Hart was an American entertainment team that was popular in the latter third of the 19th century.

People
Harrigan and Hart was formed when Edward Harrigan dissolved his partnership with Sam Rickey and added Tony Hart as his partner. The duo performed at the Theatre Comique in New York City until it burned in 1884, after which they moved to the Park Theatre. In 1890, Harrigan opened his own venue, Harrigan's Theatre, in New York.

Venues
Harrigan and Hart's tenure at Theatre Comique made that hall the most popular variety-show site in New York City. Harrigan wrote playlets, including songs by David Braham, that attracted audiences. The extended sketches, described by one source as "rollicking Irish farces", usually lasted a week and were often repeated in the next month or the next season. Productions such as The Mulligan Guard Ball featured absurdity, with Harrigan portraying Dan Mulligan during a bad day in his life and Hart playing a black woman.

The team's popularity spread, leading to a six-month engagement in 1871 at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. They continued to tour from there, performing in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in addition to going as far west as Chicago.

Roles
Braham's musical compositions "were some of the wittiest and most professional of their day", and his work as musical director as well as composer usually left members of the audience singing or whistling at least one tune from each show.

The writer of the pair, Harrigan, gathered material from real life, making mental notes as he traversed picnics, political halls, docks, streets -- "wherever there was a crowd of plain humans who were letting themselves out for a good time". Converted into stage productions, what had begun as everyday fare attracted crowds. Besides having a gift for writing, Harrigan had a knack for producing shows. His talents complemented those of Hart, who was described in the trade publication Billboard as a female impersonator "who sang like a nightingale an danced like a fairy".

Demise
The partnership ended in 1883. Harrigan and Hart had a three-week run on Broadway in Twins in April and May and performed together for the last time in Brooklyn, New York, in June.