Oscar Asche - A breif history

Oscar Asche was educated at Laurel Lodge, Dandenong and the Melbourne Grammar School, which he left at 16. He then went on a holiday voyage to China, and after his return to Australia was articled to an architect who died soon afterwards. A few months later, he ran away and lived in the bush for some weeks and then obtained a position as a jackeroo. He returned to his parents and obtained a position in an office, but he had now decided to become an actor and made a beginning by getting up private theatricals at his home. He travelled to Fiji and on his return his father agreed to send him to Norway to study acting. At Bergen, Norway, Asche was instructed in deportment, voice production and theatre arts.

On 25 March 1893 Asche made his first appearance on the stage, at the Opera Comique Theatre, London, as Roberts in Man and Woman. He then joined the F. R. Benson Company and for eight years gained experience an actor. Asche played over a hundred roles with this company including Brutus, King Claudius and other important Shakespearian parts. His resonant voice and his dignified, formal bearing are often mentioned in the reviews of his performances. Asche married Lily Brayton, another member of the company, in 1898, and the two were often cast in the same productions for many years.

In 1904, Asche and his wife became managers of the Adelphi Theatre, where they mounted many successful productions. Then in 1907 Asche and his wife took over the management of His Majesty's Theatre and produced Laurence Binyon’s Attila, with Asche in the title role, and innovative productions of Shakespeare plays, such as As You Like It,, and Othello, both with Asche in the title role.

In 1916, Asche produced his play Chu Chin Chow, with music by Frederic Norton, starring himself and his wife, which ran from 31 August 1916 to 22 July 1921, a world's record that stood for decades. The show drew some criticism for the ladies' scanty costumes, which Herbert Beerbohm Tree described as "more navel than millinery", but it was just what war-weary audiences wanted. Asche played the part of Abu Hasan and confessed that "it got terribly boring going down those stairs night after night to go through the same old lines". But Asche was a perfectionist, and the performance was never allowed to get slack. Chu Chin Chow also played in New York City in 1917 and Australia in 1920.

Asche established a great reputation as a producer, and during the run of Chu Chin Chow, he directed the hit London production of The Maid of the Mountains for Robert Evett and the George Edwardes Estate, which also had a record run for a play of its kind. As a director, Asche was an important influence in his time. He was an innovator in stage lighting and one of the first to use it as a dramatic factor in productions rather than as mere illumination. He was known for his use of colour, and for his sensitivity about the dividing line between opulence and vulgarity. He brought unprecedented numbers of spectators to the theatre at its most difficult time during World War I, and he has been credited for extending the popularity of the theatre in competition with cinema.

After the success of Chu Chin Chow, Asche wrote another musical that opened on Broadway in 1920 under the name Mecca and then in London the following year under the name Cairo. It was not a big success on either side of the Atlantic. In 1922, Asche visited Australia again, under contract to J. C. Williamson Ltd., and made successful appearances as Hornblower in Galsworthy's The Shin Game, Maldonado in Pinero's Iris, his usual roles in Chu Chin Chow and Cairo, the title character in Julius Caesar, and in other Shakespeare plays.

In 1933, Asche made his last stage appearance in The Beggar’s Bowl at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Asche also made appearances in seven films between 1932 and 1936 (including as the Spirit of Christmas Present in the 1935 film Scrooge, with Seymour Hicks), and wrote several books, including his autobiography.

In his final years, Asche became grossly fat, desperately poor, argumentative and violent. Asche and his wife separated, but he returned to her and died at the age of 65 in Bisham, Berkshire, of coronary thrombosis. He was buried there in the riverside cemetery.