Angel Symon follows father Josiah in love of Shakespeare, leaving big theatrical collection to Adelaide University
Daughter of eminent Adelaide lawyer Josiah Symon who wrote books on Shakespeare, Floy Angel Nan (Angel) Symon became secretary and advanced publicity officer for the Shakepearean theatre company of Allan Wilkie (at right as Hamlet) touring Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s/30s.
Angel Symon image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The Allan Wilkie-Frediswyde Hunter-Watts Theatre Collection, bequeathed to Adelaide University’s Barr Smith Library in 1976 by Floy Angel Nan (Angel) Symon, had more than 6,000 items on 19th/early 20th century English stage history. This was backed by large diverse collections of programmes and souvenirs, illustrations, playbills and newspaper clippings.
Angel Symon, a daughter of Adelaide legal giant Josiah Symon and wife Eleanor, met Allan Wilkie, a 1920s/30s Australian theatre icon, in 1916 at 19. Wilke and second wife Frediswyde Hunter-Watts led a theatre company presenting Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a passion of Josiah Symon, whose writings included Shakespeare at Home (1905) and Shakespeare the Englishman (1924).
Angel, one of five capable Symon daughters, also had a passion for theatre that she followed in England and Europe. Born in Adelaide in 1896, she was educated privately and at Miss Schroeder's School, Mount Lofty, in summer, and Miss Cussens' School, North Adelaide, in winter, and later in England at Manor House, Brondesbury. Back in Australia in 1914, she worked with Red Cross and studied French at Adelaide University.
Angel Symon toured with Allan Wilkie's theatre company as secretary and kept it in the public eye as advance publicity officer, with occasional walk-on parts, from 1920-23 and 1925-26. Wilkie, among the last of the British actor-managers from Henry Irving’s era, came to Australia in 1914 and worked with Nellie Stewart and J.C. Williamson companies. Wilkie launched his own touring Shakespearean company in 1920. After four years, the Wilkie company claimed a world record 1,000 consecutive performances of Shakespeare. Wilkie's wanted to stage all 37 Shakespeare plays but, by 1931, when the company closed due to the Depression and the “talkies”, he’d managed 27.
Between working for the Wilkie company, Angel Symon travelled to England, interested in 1920s experimental theatre. In London in 1924, she was honorary secretary for the Gate Theatre and Playroom 6, along with other studio theatres. In 1928, she was secretary to Melbourne Repertory Company under Frank Clewlow, who’d also toured with Wilkie. Symon had travelled through England and Europe several times with her sisters, visiting theatres, opera and concerts, also lectures in costume design and experimental theatre in France and Germany. In the 1920s, she commissioned a London architect to do plans for a civic theatre for Adelaide based on European theatre buildings, and she had “began building up a theatre collection – books, prints and theatre material as a reference library and museum for the performing arts in the planned theatre”.
Angel Symon developed strong links with the English theatre world, and kept friendships with Ifan Kyrle Fletcher (of the Society for Theatre Research), Cyril Beaumont and Arnold Haskell among many others who “encouraged, aided and abetted” her collection. She supported theatre in Australia and overseas. In 1974, not invited to the Festival Theatre opening, Symon wrote to Adelaide Festival Centre Trust chairman John Baily: 'I am confident that no one in South Australia has had a greater life long love for and interest in the theatre ... with my late father and members of my family I have always supported the performing arts and have worked for the survival, development and renaissance of the theatre in South Australia.”.
From the 1950s, Angel Symon lived with her sister at Stringys, Mary Clark's property in Echunga, where they hosted many theatre and ballet people. Angel died in an accident in 1976. Her will wanted her theatrical collection kept together. Mary retained part of it for her own use and continued to add to it, especially in ballet. In 1983, she donated $10,000 to help catalogue the collection. It was transferred to the Barr Smith library when Mary died in 1988.
