TS Eliot likened the death of Marie Lloyd in 1922 to the depopulation of Melanesia, whose inhabitants were so enervated by the arrival of western civilisation they effectively died of boredom. As the most popular music-hall entertainer of the age, Lloyd fought hard against the new forms of mass entertainment which were suffocating live variety shows, though it is probably fair to say she was not a great reader of Eliot.
Eliot was not the only one of Lloyd's unlikely admirers: her militant stand in the 1907 entertainer's strike was supported in parliament by Winston Churchill. Yet despite the influence of friends in high places, Lloyd was furious to be barred from the first Royal Variety Performance because her act was considered too lewd for royalty.
Lloyd's innuendos seem fairly harmless now, though she always maintained that indecency lay in the mind of the beholder. The highlight of Elizabeth Mansfield's solo performance is a reconstruction of Lloyd's appearance before the licensing magistrates in which she croons A Little of What You Fancy with the purity of an Elizabethan madrigal, before making Tennyson's Come Into the Garden, Maud sound like a molester's invitation to a schoolgirl.
Lloyd's legendary resistance to mechanical reproduction - she insisted that she "didn't work the halls for 30 years in order to sing into a bucket" - means there is no way of verifying the accuracy of Mansfield's impersonation. But she has an accent rough enough to strike matches on, and appears to be a woman of many parts. Steve Trafford's monologue is a little skimpy on biographical information, but the musical numbers contain more than enough to tickle your fancy.
