Marie Litton

Marie Litton (1847 – 1 April 1884) was the stage name of Mary Jessie Lowe, an English actress and theatre manager. After beginning a stage career in 1868, Litton became an actor-manager in 1871, producing plays for four years at the Court Theatre, including several by W. S. Gilbert. She also appeared in, and sometimes managed, other West End theatres. In the late 1870s, Litton managed the theatre at the Royal Aquarium, where she had some of her biggest acting successes, including as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal (1877), Lydia Languish in The Rivals (1878), Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer and Rosalind in As You Like It (both in 1879).

Litton was born in Hartington, Derbyshire, but was raised in Lincolnshire, where her father Thomas Lowe was a clergyman. In 1868 she made her London stage debut at the Princess's Theatre as the title character in The Trial of Effie Deans, a play by Dion Boucicault, adapted from Sir Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian. She followed this with the leading role in Boucicault's Presumptive Evidence. Later in 1868, at the opening of the Gaiety Theatre, she played Mrs Cureton in a play by Alfred Thompson, On the Cards, adapted from L'Escamoteur by Paulin Meunier. She next appeared there as Alice Renshaw in Uncle Dick's Darling, by H. J. Byron (1869). After this, she appeared for a year for Mrs Nye Chart at the Theatre Royal, Brighton.

From 1871 to 1874, Litton managed the Court Theatre, beginning with a play by W. S. Gilbert, Randall's Thumb. She also produced Gilbert's Creatures of Impulse, Great Expectations (adapted from the Dickens novel) and On Guard, all in 1881, and The Happy Land and The Wedding March, both in 1873. Litton appeared in most of the plays that she produced, receiving favourable critical reviews for the "grace of manner" of her acting. At times during her tenure at the Court, she also appeared at the Haymarket Theatre; there she created the role of Zayda in Gilbert's The Wicked World (1873). She also briefly managed the Queen's Theatre. She created the role of Caroline Effingham in Gilbert's Tom Cobb at the St James's Theatre in 1875, and played Mrs Montressor in Unequal Match by Tom Taylor at the Prince of Wales's Theatre.

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