Actress and male impersonator

Gwen Lally (real name Gwendoline Rosalie Lally Tollendal Speck), daughter of a ‘gentleman’, began her acting career in 1906 under the management of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty’s Theatre, London. In 1912 she wrote and appeared as the male lead in The Escape, based on the life of her famous forebear Count Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal, a Jacobite who was hanged in 1766. 

The only time Lally ever played a female character was in Dinner Together in 1914, a farcical one-act variety episode at the Oxford Theatre. However, her character was ‘a male impersonator à la Vesta Tilley’. In the First World War she played Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice and Osric in Hamlet at the Old Vic, where there was a shortage of male actors due to the war. A reviewer in The Stage in 1916 commented:

This lady is so accustomed to male parts, and presents them with such fidelity, that her sex is frequently mistaken on the stage. 

Lally told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1934 that she could ‘claim the distinction of being the only actress who has never worn skirts on the stage’.

The Battle Abbey Pageant

Lally intended her Pageant of Battle Abbey in 1932 to unite the whole of East Sussex, with a cast of 7,000 volunteers performing a large-scale pageant. However, at a time of economic crisis, she managed to recruit only 2,600 pageanteers. 

Lally told the Sussex Agricultural Express that she and her partner, Mabel Gibson,

had felt definite psychic influences in the Abbey grounds at late rehearsals … I think that the monks were probably not displeased with us, for we were doing them no dishonour in making those lovely scenes live again.

A sighting of a ghostly monk convinced Lally to proceed with the pageant, despite several obstacles.

The pageant told the story of Battle Abbey in the wider context of the county in nine episodes. Starting with Harold at the Norman court and the 1066 Battle of Hastings, it culminated with a scene in Battle Fair in 1876. An episode of 18th-century smugglers added drama, but its performers were disappointed to be excluded from the final procession and accompanying church service. It was not thought appropriate to include ‘disreputable’ characters.

The reception of the pageant was mixed. This seemed to boil down to a difference of opinion about the pageant form: some disliked Lally’s artistic approach with its minimal use of words, dramatic visual staging and inclusion of fictional episodes. She described her pageants in 1927 as like a ‘silent super-film, but filled in with appropriate battle cries, songs and acclamations; the action must be swift, the scenario dramatic, and the music … atmospheric’.

Artistic and life partnership

Lally left no known record of her private life, but recent research suggests that she may have had an enduring relationship with the actress Mabel Gibson. Early clues about Lally’s sexuality are contained in a volume of poems she published in 1907. Most were about romantic love and written to a female subject, who in some of the poems was addressed as ‘Phyllis’. 

From 1927 Lally had an artistic partnership with Mabel (aka Amabel) Gibson, née Howitt (1887–1979). Lally credited Gibson as her ‘partner’ in the production of her pageants and Women’s Institute productions. Gibson produced her own pageant in Wolverhampton in 1931. The two women also gave lectures and judged acting competitions together. 

The daughter of an artist, Mabel Gibson was evidently an accomplished actress and had worked in Canada and America. She appeared on stage with Lally several times. They typically performed scenes from Sheridan or Shakespeare playing romantic heterosexual couples, with Lally in the male role. For example, in 1928 the Banbury Guardian reported that Gibson played the bride Princess Katharine to Lally’s Henry V, and published a photo of the happy couple. 

The two women were perhaps hiding their relationship in plain sight. They lived together from at least 1924 until Lally’s death in 1963, when she left her estate to Gibson, who was described as a widow.

By Deborah Sugg Ryan, Professor of Design History & Theory, University of Portsmouth