Alfred Lester

Alfred Leslie Lester (25 October 1874 – 6 May 1925) was an English actor and comedian. Born into a theatrical family, he learnt his craft touring in melodramas, as a young man, but made his reputation as a comedian in musical comedy, music hall and, later, revue.

Lester's gloomy stage persona was seen to its quintessential comic effect in the long-running musical The Arcadians (1909) in which he delivered optimistic lyrics in a lugubrious manner. Among his other hit shows were The New Aladdin (1906), Havana (1908) and The Bing Boys Are Here (1916). His co-stars included George Grossmith Jr., Phyllis Dare, George Robey and Violet Lorraine.

Ill health brought Lester's career to a premature close, and he died of pneumonia at the age of fifty.

Lester was born in Nottingham, the son of the comedian Alfred Leslie and his wife, an actress whose stage name was Annie Ross. Lester made his theatrical debut at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, in the role of Little Willie Carlyle in East Lynne. He toured the provinces for several years playing in some comedies in roles such as Charles Middlewick in Our Boys, but the staples of the touring repertory were melodramas, including The Lights o' London, The Shaughraun and The Colleen Bawn. An obituarist suggested that "the melancholy he had thus learnt to bathe in never quite dried off him; he used to let it drip on the musical comedy and revue stages."

In 1905 Lester was engaged to play in a musical comedy, The Officers' Mess – or How They Got Out of It at Terry's Theatre, London, where he was spotted by Alfred Butt, who ran variety shows at the Palace Theatre. Lester made an immediate impression with his monologue "The Sceneshifter", in which a gloomy stagehand gives his ideas for the improvement and brightening of Hamlet. He was booked for further monologues and sketches by Butt, and in 1906 he appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in London as the Lost Constable in George Grossmith Jr.'s musical The New Aladdin, in which the reviewer in The Times judged his performance the funniest thing in the show. At the same theatre he played Nix, the bo'sun, in another musical Havana in 1908; again, his performance received critical praise as the best thing in the piece.

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