The Oxford Novelty Vaudeville Company Onstage

This week’s photo comes from the collection of the Reinewald family at the Portsmouth Athenaeum. Ralph L. Reinewald, who lived at 27 Washington Street, Portsmouth, was bandmaster of the US Naval Band at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and a music teacher in Portsmouth. This odd image shows The Oxford Novelty Company posing in an empty outdoor theater. But where?

Many of the family photos show outings in the Seacoast region. The people onstage include members of a musical group as well as two jugglers and a female performer (perhaps a dancer who used the tambourines sitting on a nearby table). The rings for a gymnastic exhibition hang just overhead.

I spotted this vaudeville troupe in Maine newspaper ads from 1900 and they were described in a New York newspaper only as “refined artistic entertainment.”  The Oxford Novelty Co might be appearing here at a venue in York Beach where the Reinewald family sometimes visited. If you have more info, please pass it along.