Entertainment of old
Vaudeville is a genre of live theatre dating back hundreds of years, which can feature a range of acts from music and comedy to pantomime, dancing and multifarious skills. Comedy royalty Bill Bailey will transform into a modern Vaudevillean this week as he brings his own version to the Event Centre stage.
The show will celebrate the great tradition of vaudeville and shows off Bailey’s multi-instrumental, multi-lingual humour and musical prowess. The idea was sparked after a realisation that the last few shows he’s done have incorporated more musical instruments – and some very unique ones, too.
“I realised that actually what I do is classic vaudeville, really,” Bailey says. “I thought I’d lean into that after all these years of doing a show which was very much about all the things which I love and that really populated the vaudvillean shows.”
He explains that the name comes from an old French town in Normandy, where songs emerged from taverns in the 1400s, which were satirical in nature. Eventually the shows crossed over the pond to America and continued to gain interest, peaking around the mid-1800s.
“It was enormously popular and it was the premier entertainment for many, many years. This was at a time before radio, before TV, before film, before the internet – this was the only place you could get entertainment.”
What made it so different is that it moved away from what was commonly happening at the time – late shows aimed at men, probably a bit seedy – and into an earlier-evening, more family-friendly genre. Punters would see anything and everything on stage, as long as it was entertaining. Bailey is proudly carrying the torch for vaudeville into 2025, with its popularity dropping after the introduction of TV and movie theatres.
“This is my statement against the idea that entertainment is something that can just be piped in. Real entertainment is where you have a connection with an audience, and a live audience at that. I’m keeping alive a very ancient tradition which actually brings people together in a way that perhaps other entertainment doesn’t.”
Queenstown is the first show on his nationwide tour, and will be Vaudevillean’s debut, where Bailey will play a range of different instruments from ancient to modern, ones that he’s never played before and others he’s well-versed in. One such instrument is the ektara.
“It’s a one-stringed lute from the Indian subcontinent from the 1400s, called an ektara. It’s got a string in the middle and a sound box in the base, and you pluck this one string and then squeeze these wooden struts around it to alter the tone. It’s a curious thing, but it makes an amazing sound.”
He’ll also be playing a typewriter, performing Leroy Anderson’s piece “The Typewriter”. Bailey has played the piece just once before with a full orchestra, so it will certainly be a different experience. Some of the more unique instruments in his collection have been gifted to him which he feels very lucky to receive, inspiring him to use them – whether out of interest or obligation.
When asked if he could only play one instrument for the rest of his life, what would it be, he replied, “I think piano would probably be up there, only because that’s the instrument that I learned to play music on when I was young and something I play every day.”
Bailey would love for the audience to walk away with a renewed interest in the history of entertainment. Today we see a lot of technology that encourages us to stay in – watch movies from home, order food in, etcetera.
While going out may require more effort and planning, Bailey reckons it’s well worth it and it keeps alive an ancient tradition.
“There’s a real desire amongst people to be a part of a live audience – there’s something about it that can’t be replicated in any other way. I feel that we should really celebrate it and not take it for granted, because it could quite easily not happen – when we were denied it during the pandemic, we realised how much a part of our lives it is,” Bailey says.
Bill Bailey’s Vaudevillean will be at Queenstown Events Centre on Wednesday, 29 October at 8pm. Tickets and more information are available at eventfinda.co.nz/2025/bill-bailey-vaudevillean/queenstown
