Last Day of Term!

Well, it's the last Day of Term for Carol at the Milton Keynes Academy! Most of the kids are off to either Thorpe Park or Alton Towers (theme parks, if those readers who are outside Britain and don't know.) To be quite honest, I don't envy the staff. Not places I would readily choose to visit. For one thing, incredibly over-priced and for another I don't exactly enjoy the sort of extreme rides they have. About two years ago we took Sam and Daniel there, dropped them off and then went off to visit Stoke-On-Trent, ending up in the museum there which was far more to our taste. It costs around £40 per head and now they expect you to pay to park your car all day! A bit of a cheek, considering you have no options as regards parking. I think it costs an additional £14. Also, being in such a place when the temperature is in the high 90's doesn't appeal in the least. 

The Royal Baby was born last night. A boy, as if you didn't know. All the waiting is now over. What will William and Kate, or to be more formal, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, name their child, who is the third in-line to the British throne? We will have to wait and see.

I may not post anything on this blog for a while, due to going on holiday and other matters arising, so don't be too disappointed if you are an avid follower. I'll be back on here around the end of August.

400th Post

Today I have managed to reach yet another landmark with this blog. I have now managed to get to 400 posts, this one is actually the 401st and there have now been 17700 page views. Quite amazing, because when I began this blog I imagined there might be half a dozen at most.

Well, summer has at last arrived and the sun is out. Actually quite dangerous for someone with a heart condition. It can increase your blood pressure quite considerably, so it's as well to stay out of the direct sun and drink plenty. Just keep cool. Wear a hat outdoors, as I was told by one of the heart nurses, when I went to rehab after I had my heart attack 7 years ago.

Working In Theatre- Part 7

After "A Voyage Round My Father" the next show was a pantomime, just in time for Christmas 1970. There is something about panto which I don't particularly like. It's all corny and rather stupid. I know it's 'traditional' but I much prefer my theatre to be a little more imaginative. Everyone  seems to  not care that they know the story, no more so than the classic pantomime plots of Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack and The Bean Stalk etc etc. This one was 'Dick Whittington.' There was one difference with this one, the roles of Jack and Alice  were played more realistically with Dick played by a man and  Alice Fitzwarren played by a girl and not the more traditional roles of  Principal Boy and Girl, although it did have a Dame, the cook, played traditionally by a man, in this case an actor called Bill Stewart. Also, at the end, it didn't have Alice marrying Dick, for some reason, a sort of almost feminist slant, but it didn't really work for some reason. It doesn't make sense if the hero doesn't marry the heroine. It was almost like a musical in that it had a completely original score with some very good lyrics, unlike most pantos that have pop songs sprinked freely amongst the plot, as well as a rather unhealthy mix of soap stars and television 'names.' Also, strange variety acts that are put in, basically just to fill up the running time and having not a great deal to do with the plot of the show.  I suppose the stars draw in the audience and I imagine this will be a lot of children's first experience of live theatre. Maybe it will be their only experience of theatre all year. Possibly most adults, unfortunately. Also, it's the one show that the theatre manager can make a good deal of money from ticket sales and help to prop up ailing productions during the rest of the year. Although I might not be a lover of pantomime, I did love working on them, as the atmosphere backstage was always very good. Hard work, though, as there would be a lot of scene changes, a great deal of hauling on ropes to 'fly' out clothes and generally enormous flats to be moved around the stage.

The first dress rehearsal ran for over three hours, which was thought to be far too long, so, unfortunately, quite a lot of material had to be cut, and some of it was good material. I suppose when you have a children's audience it's not a good idea for a show to run too long, and some days we would do three performances, a morning show, a matinee and then an evening performance. A very long and tiring day. So you can see why the running time was best kept to around two and a half hours at most.

The stage at Greenwich is a thrust, and there is no curtain or 'tabs'. Also, absolutely no sort of grid over the stage, so nothing could be flown', so the designer for this panto had to be ingenious to allow scene changes and to allow a fairly wide range of settings. As there was no sort of arrangement for flying, you couldn't have flown cloths for settings as you would have for a pantomime in a traditional proscenium theatre.  The idea that was used was that it had a sort of children's book feel, and the main up-stage area was a sort of toybox, which, at the beginning of the show was closed. It was broken into two, hinged sections, like large doors. Myself and another A.S.M. were to be responsible for opening and closing these 'doors' and we had to time it such that they opened and closed precisely, and particularly when closed, otherwise it would have looked awful. Behind these doors any sort of scene change could be done, with the downstage area being used for some scenes, and then the doors opened for the next scene.

We were both involved in the 'Storm' scene. This was done in U.V. light (ultra-violet) which means that certain bits of scenery, props etc are painted in a substance which reacts to ultra violet light from tubes or bulbs. The scene was when Dick Whittington and his cat are caught in a storm at sea and then shipwrecked on a desert island (or something. Not sure of the exact plot now.) Myself and the other A.S.M. had to operate puppet versions of Dick and the cat, and they end up on a raft or something and this is all done in complete darkness, so you can imagine how difficult it must have been and to cover a scene change. I think this would have been my first experience of puppetry in some form or another.

 Most pantomimes have a 'song sheet,' the bit in the show where one of the principal characters does a song and this song is brought in from the flies and the audience is involved, there's a lot of participation and children are bought on stage and usually one half of the audience sings one line and the other half alternate lines, or something similar and one side wins. I think you get the idea. Well, the pantomime at Greenwich was no different, except that instead of the songsheet being flown in it was painted on a sort of sign board and myself and the other A.S.M had to bring it on stage from the wings. The participation for this section was done by Derek Griffiths and one other character, don't ask me who it was no, as I've forgotten. All went the same each performance for around four weeks until the last night. Instead of us coming on and merely holding the board for the audience to read and sing to, WE were more or less forced to join in, and couldn't leave the stage until we'd done a song and dance across the stage. Our exits into the wings either side of the stage was blocked so we couldn't get off-stage, so we were more or less expected to do something! Such is the atmosphere of doing pantomime.

The next show to come in after Dick Whittington was not the usual play, musical or whatever. It was a month of music hall. The theatre had been rebuilt from what had been a former music hall, so I suppose it was only right that it should hark back to it's origins. On the bill for one week were two famous stars of the past, Elsie and Doris Waters. This intrigued me as my grandmother had piles of old 78 r.p.m records, and some of these had these two on them, doing sketches from around the time of the Second World War. Another 'act' was a drag act called Mrs Shufflewick, actually an actor called Rex Jameson. And the final star was the best as far as I was concerned, the legendary Max Wall. He did most of his iconic act, including him wearing his famous wig, those strange trousers and short jacket which seemed several sizes too small. My involvement was that I was supposed to go on and place his piano stool in place so that he could come on and sit down and then play the piano, if 'play' is the right word, I don't know. Well, rather in the style of the pantomime and the song sheet, all went the same each night, I'd come on from exactly the same side and put the stool in place, and Max Wall would say, in his inimitable way 'where's me st . . .o . . .  o. . . l?'  (I have since discovered that the on-stage character he played, which involved the amazing walk, poorly-fitting suit along with the 'bald' wig, was called Professor Wallofski. Apparently this was, according to John Cleese, the inspiration for The Ministry  of Silly Walks  sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus.) But one night I decided to be different and came on from the OPPOSITE side from normal, and got a round of applause from the audience. So, I can say I've been on stage and performed with the legendary Max Wall.

Working In Theatre- Part 6

 I remember John Mortimer arriving at the rehearsal studio and some days bringing in completely new scenes he had only just written. It seems that when the play started rehearsals that it wasn't complete, hence the new scenes as well as some scenes being completely rewritten. It must have been quite stressful for the actors involved as it would have meant new lines to be learned.

I went with the designer of the show on a prop-buying expection in central London. We went to a variety of prop hire companies and even into Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush. It was quite an experience for a rather 'green' youngster at the time to be going into this famous building, and particularly into areas that you wouldn't probably get access if you didn't know a member of staff there, as he obviously was. We went into the B.B.C. club, the staff-only bar and restaurant and design department. All of this is now closed down as the B.B.C. vacated the building earlier this year. 

"A Voyage Round My Father" was due to start it's run with a Press Night, as most new plays do. It was a World Premier, so there would have been a lot of interest. We did a technical rehearsal, but the set would not work.  It took something like four nights for the show to be 'got in' to being something like ready for a technical rehearsal. I had been detailed for something  like two nights to look after the technicians from the company who supplied the equipment that worked the set to make them tea and generally keep them supplied with food, sandwiches etc, in a vain attempt to get the set working so that the show could proceed to it's Opening Night. But, after a great deal of effort it was decided during the Technical rehearsal, that the set wasn't going to work as planned and the scene changes would have to be done  another way without the 'forms' moving up and down stage and spinning round on their axes. We had to bring furniture and other pieces of scenery on in full view of the audience with the projections set to be projected onto the stationary 'forms.' The revolving section worked well enough to be used as planned.

During one of the performances the lighting was being re-designed as the show went along, not something that is usual in any show. One performance was extra special, as we had Royalty in the audience. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden came to this particular performance and there was a great buzz around the theatre as at first it wasn't clear who the 'royal personage' was. Special arrangements were made to the restaurant in the theatre with a screened-off area for them to sit and have their meal. I believe that they came up the river from central London and came to the theatre from the river-side, but I can't be sure now. So, I can say that I have appeared on stage 'before royalty' even though I was only pushing a piece of scenery on stage!

I would imagine that "A Voyage Round My Father" was eventually going to transfer into the West End. It wasn't clear one way or the other, but it would have been great if it had and all those who had worked on it in Greenwich had gone with it,  including myself, but it didn't have a West End transfer. We were visited by several prominent actors who would have been cast as the central character of the father, such as Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Alex Guinness. I believe that Alex Guiness did eventually play the part in the West End and Laurence Olivier was in a brand new television version which was made by Thames Television. I do remember Olivier coming backstage having seen a performance. The play has since been revived more recently, with Derek Jacobi in the role of the father and staged at the Donmar Warehouse.

During this period there were many strikes, it was during the 'Winter of Discontent' of the 1970's, and at one point there were many different groups of workers on strike, particularly dustmen, and I recall seeing piles of rubbish along the side of streets in London due to this strike, rubbish which hadn't been collected due to these strikes. Also, power workers went on strike and there were a lot of power cuts. As a result, places such as theatres were not considered important enough to have electricity and some were closed early to preserve electricity. Also, lights in shops were turned off early in the evening. It was at this time that Greenwich Theatre installed a generator to provide power to light the stage lighting and emergency lighting and so allowing performances to continue uninterrupted. One performance was, though, underway, when there was a powercut.  This must have been before the generator was installed. The actors continued, presumably expecting the electricity to be restored, but it didn't come on, and the audience seemed to enjoy the performance, and it must have been rather like experiencing a live radio play. Quite amazing, and brilliant that the actors managed to continue in the dark!

During this time I had an interview at R.A.D.A. (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) to join their stage management course. I didn't get accepted. They said, as I was already working in theatre, there wasn't much they could teach me that I didn't already know. I don't know, on reflection, whether it would have made any difference to me, but as I had got around three years of experience behind me, I'm not sure whether I would have benefitted.

Ranting Raving Neighbour

Yesterday evening we were very quietly sitting at home in our lounge, watching television, trying to keep cool on what must have been the hottest day of the year so far, when there was the loudest and what seemed the most impatient knock on our front door. I didn't exactly rush to answer, and Carol said 'That'll be the Avon lady with the order from the catalogue.' We've been waiting for this for the past few days and we had the money to pay, but as it was late arriving, we had spent some of it on some vital bits of shopping. By now whoever it was at the door was getting more impatient that I hadn't answered, so I picked up my wallet with the expectation of finding the Avon lady standing on the doorstep, bearing a parcel of the ordered items. But no, it wasn't. On opening the door, I revealed the sight of a large, overstuffed gentleman of overbearing face glaring at me. He proceeded to  pour forth, in somewhat indesipherable Scottish accent which took some time to understand, that why did I let our dogs out at 6 o'clock in the morning to bark??? He didn't let up with his ranting, barely allowing me to speak, just letting rip with bad language, not allowing me to have my say on the matter, let alone explain that our two dogs weren't the only dogs in the neighbourhood. But he just would not have it. Unreasonable and unresponsive. I'm afraid I shut the door on the headcase, as I simply wasn't going to have to endure his torrent of abuse.

Working In Theatre- Part 5

I'm moving ahead somewhat in time to late 1970. I got a job as A.S.M. at Greenwich Theatre. I had kept the impetus going with work, even when one job came to an end and I was out of work. I wrote a lot of letters to various companies across the United Kingdom and I got the Greenwich job because a cousin on my father's side of the family had come to stay and mentioned Greenwich Theatre to me as she lived in that part of London, Eltham if my memory serves. I think Greenwich Theatre had only recently opened, but I'm not sure.  I wrote a letter to the theatre and lo and behold I got asked for an interview as they had a vacancy for an A.S.M. I went for an interview and was offered the job. I lived with my cousin Helen at her flat in Eltham, which was fortunate.

The show that was running, if I remember, when I went for my interview, was a play called "The Servants and The Snow" by Iris Murdoch (not related, as far as I know, but I suppose if you have the same surname as someone you are bound to have a common ancestor, the same way that Rupert Murdoch must be related to me somewhere along the line.) It might have been in rehearsal, as I think I saw them rehearsing on the stage when I went for my interview. Some of this is all a bit vague as my memory isn't too clear. Well, it was over forty years ago.

I started there working on a show called "Down The Arches" which was a sort of musical documentary about the building and opening of the London to Greenwich railway. It had Derek Griffiths in it, who is perhaps best know as one of the presenters on "Play School," the children's show that ran for years and was probably one of the first programmes on air when BBC2 opened in 1964. I remember he did an extremely good mime during this show. I was involved with the lighting, sitting in the control box at the rear of the auditorium and helping to set up the lighting cues on a very complex lighting board. Nowadays I expect this would be all computerised, you no doubt just press a few keys and the lighting changes are done automatically, fades and all, but in those days there were no such luxurys and it took about three of us to set these lighting cues up quickly enough before the next cue came from the prompt corner.

Then the next show in was "A Voyage Round My Father" by John Mortimer. This had started life as a BBC production, one of the Plays of Today single dramas on BBC 1. It may or may not have been done on radio, but I'm not sure of that. It had the same director as the original television production, Claude Watham, and the designer had worked on this, but I can't remember his name. It had David Wood, Mark Dignam and Trevor Bannister in it. He went on to play Mr Lucas in the BBC sitcom "Are You Being Served?"
The set for this show was rather complex. To allow for quick scene changes, part of the set was a revolve at one side of the stage. The remainder of the set consisted of several large multi-sided 'forms', for want of a better word, which were supposed to be winched up and down stage to make more 'scenes' and then projectors where used to project photographs onto the sides of these 'forms' so you could have a scene in a park or garden with projected flowers, trees etc or an interior of, say, a courtroom with wood panelling as you'd get in a courtroom or buildings for streets for an exterior. This might have seemed a really good way to stage the play ON PAPER, but once it had been constructed it wasn't going to work as expected. A false floor had been built over the actual stage floor, to allow special track to be laid, so the 'forms' could run along the false floor and cabling that pulled the shapes up and down stage with the added complication of motors inside these shapes so they could revolve at the same time as moving up or down stage. I hope all this makes sense. It might sound complex, but it is quite difficult to explain.

Working In Theatre- Part 4

It makes me laugh, looking back, but at the time I was offered my first job, back in 1968, when I was at Mander College in Bedford (now plain old Bedford College. Don't ask me why they changed the name.) and I was failing my A Levels miserably, there was a story going  around the place, when I said I was  going to work in 'rep', that I'd actually got a job AS A REP!  I can't think why I would go off and be a 'rep' supposedly going from door-to-door selling something such as brushes, insurance or encyclopedias, or from company to company selling something else. Why would I do that? I have no selling skill and I can't imagine myself doing such a thing. But, thinking about it, if you didn't realise that 'rep' was short for 'repertory' I suppose you could confuse it for the selling-type of rep. It just goes to show, looking back all those years, the sort of way people can have an ignorance about something, how you are more or less expected to follow a certain path in your life, and that, if you veer from that path, you are, in some way, thought of being a bit odd. I really do hope things are different now, where children at school who want a career that is slightly different from 'The Norm'  can do so without being made to feel they're odd in some way. Perhaps that was what it was like in the late '60's. I wasn't exactly given much help with my career-path with teachers at school. I think anything to do with 'The Arts' and 'Theatre' was thought of as 'not being a career', that it was 'insecure' and that it would be better if you found something else to do with your life. Perhaps it wasn't actually verbalized, but, looking back, it seems as if that was what was going through people's minds when I had said that I wanted to do something 'artistic' as a profession.

I recall several of the plays that were produced during my time at Colchester. One being "Loot" a somewhat controversial play by Joe Orton. This is an extremely black comedy, to say the least. It may not be considered to be so controversial by today's standards, but when it was first staged, I imagine in the mid-1960's, one has to bear in mind that in Britain there was still censorship in theatre, so a great deal of what was portrayed would have had to be vetted before it could be staged. I think Orton's intention was to shock, and this play could definitely be said to shock. I'm not sure what sort of reaction it had on the Colchester audience in the early 1970's, but I would imagine that they would be fairly conservative in their tastes. The post of Lord Chamberlain had been abolished under the 1968 Theatres Act, the government official who had power to censor plays and licenced theatre premises.   So one can imagine that theatre managers at the time would  have been keen to put on plays that formerly would have come under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The play is about a couple of  young men who are planning a bank robbery. What was so controversial was the fact that they used their  deceased mother's coffin to hide the money that they had stolen. Stage management had to create all the bank notes, coffins and even a corpse, which is within a shroud. Also, we had to find a glass eye, which was supposed to roll across the floor at one point in the play, but this was actually artistic licence, as an actual glass eye isn't like a glass marble and won't roll at all.
We had to have two coffins as well as two 'mini-coffins' or caskets. One of each had to be so constructed that the side could fall out on a hinge and had to be made to look as if it had been in a fire, with  the effects of scalding and fire on it.  Off stage, before it went on stage, we used a smoke gun to add smoke, which added to the whole effect. This smoke came out of the coffin when it appeared on stage. The hinged section had to fall open on cue to reveal the hidden cash inside and that also had to look as if it was burned. We had to create bundles of £5 notes, which had been created by myself and then Roneoed (this was before the more modern photo-copying we have today, which would have made the whole process so much easier.) and then we cut up bundles of newspaper the size of the £5 notes and glued together with the tops and bottoms glued on and then painted as near as possible the colour blue of genuine £5 notes. In all there were supposed to be a few thousand pounds-worth of notes, so you can imagine how much work went into producing all these mock Fivers!  These bundles of notes did look quite convincing from the audience, but not so real on closer inspection. No, certainly not forgeries of real fivers! Also, they weighed a good deal more than real fivers. The story in the play is that the two men go off to their mother's funeral having removed the corpse from the coffin, which has been on stage from the beginning of the play, then they conceal the money inside the coffin and then there is a traffic accident on the way to the funeral which is why the coffin is burnt and they bring the second coffin back with the burnt-out effects and the hinged side which, as I say, has to be revealed on cue to show the audience and not a police inspector who comes in at the vital moment.
The corpse was actually a mannequin with hinged joints, very realistic with movements when moved about, but then is concealed inside a shroud, so when it is picked up it moves in a very realistic fashion. Quite eerie if you didn't realise it wasn't real!
During the  final week of rehearsals the actors got to use the 'prop' coffins and other items which had been constructed in the theatre workshops, which were elsewhere in Colchester and one Sunday we had to bring them over to the theatre and carried them through the town streets. It must have looked very odd to members of the public who saw all this! I don't suppose they would have realised that the coffin was not real! All these items were later hired out to other theatres for their own productions of "Loot", but I think our work and efforts producing these props were extremely good. It was one area of my stage management duties which I  really enjoyed.

Yet another production staged at Colchester Rep when I was there was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I had been involved in several other Shakespeares over the years, beginning with “A Winter’s Tale” and “Romeo and Juliet” at Cheltenham, “King Lear” at Ipswich Theatre and “Hamlet”, which was the first production I was involved in at Liverpool Playhouse.

The production  of “Dream” was something of a cut-price affair, as regards the casting. As with most Shakespeare productions, most of the parts are ‘doubled up, ’ one actor playing one or more parts. This means, for example, that the actor who plays Hamlet’s Ghost in “Hamlet” will probably also play Claudius, and in “Dream” it is  traditional for the actor playing  Theseus to also play Oberon, King of the Fairies.

At Colchester, the fairies were done in a different way from the usual. I don’t know whether it worked, but I was involved. A couple of us stage management had to operate torches with coloured gels in them, standing on ladders ‘off stage’ and shining these lights over the top of the set, and unseen by the audience. Actors spoke the lines through microphones and we had to move the ‘spots’ of light produced by the torches in synchronisation with the lines spoken by the actors. I’m not sure it worked, but at least it was different. I don't know, actually, now I come to think of it, whether the lines hadn't been pre-recorded, and we worked the lights to the recorded voices, but I'm not sure on reflection.

 We also had to be ‘walk-ons’ during the ‘Play-Within-A-Play’ scene, handing out sweets to the on-stage audience. I remember having to appear in the production of “Winter’s Tale” at Cheltenham, as well as “Romeo and Juliet.” I think it was all part of being a member of stage management in those days. I do recall, though, that one of my cousins saw me in “Dream” as she had come to see the production when she was at school, and, not knowing I was working at the theatre, was somewhat surprised to see me on stage! Also, I had these two school girls who saw me when I was having a meal in a café near the theatre, and recognised me from my ‘walk-on’ scene in the production and thought I was a proper actor and kept following me and I suppose it was quite nice while it lasted, but I wasn’t going to go on to become an actor so I didn’t think any more of it. I did say that they should be looking at the central characters and not minor ‘walk-ons’!

Working in Theatre- Part 3

I have talked about my first foray into stage management, starting at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham in February 1969 in an earlier post. I am working from memory, so excuse my lapses because what I am recounting took place a good 40-or more years ago. While  it's fairly fresh in my mind I have decided that I want to write something about my time in this before it all fades completely. Writing the last post, about summer holidays at Frinton-OnSea, has set my memory going as I used to drive from Colchester home to Bedfordshire  at weekends along the same road, the A120,  as we used to use on our way to Frinton  (Frinton is a relatively short drive from Colchester.)

 I finished in Cheltenham in the December and almost immediately got a new job working at the Rep in Colchester. I had Christmas at home and then went off in early January to begin work. The company was in the middle of a run of the annual pantomime, 'Aladdin.' I was able to see this from the audience, as I wasn't immediately called on to work on this show, which gave me a week or two to 'find my feet' as it were. Having been a 'Student A.S.M.' at the Everyman in Cheltenham, I was now officially a fully-fledged A.S.M. (Assistant Stage Manager) and now part of a team which consisted of several other A.S.Ms, D.S.M., Stage Manager and Production Manager. Michael Ashton, who had been Artistic Director at Cheltenham had also been Artistic Director of the Colchester Repertory Company. I like to think, but I'm not sure whether this is true, that it was because of this connection that I got the job.

Colchester Rep in those days was based in a very cramped building, converted from an art gallery in the 1930's.  This was located in Colchester High Street. It has since been replaced by the Mercury Theatre, built in the early 1970's. I remember it had it's foundation stone laid by Eric Porter, or else he 'cut the first turf' or whatever they call the first stage of  work on a building. He was in the highly successful 1960's  B.B.C. costume drama series "The Forstyte Saga" playing Jolyon Forsyte. The stage was very small. There was very little wing space and the back wall, which was curved, was as far as the stage went. If you had to cross from stage left to right, or vice versa, you had to go UNDER the stage. There was no stage door. If you wanted to get in to the theatre from F.O.H (front of house) you had to go through the men's toilets (!) There was a door which linked from front of house to back-stage through the toilets. When I was first shown the way, I thought it was very odd to be taken through the toilets, as you can imagine! You had to climb through a window in what was the 'props' room in order to get out of the theatre from the rear and go through a graveyard to get out to the street.There was no room above the stage for 'flying', that is, there was no grid on which bars could be suspended on hemp ropes so that scenery could be hauled up and hidden from the audience view. It was, of course, possible to suspend lighting and a certain amount of 'masking' as in other theatres, but if you were doing a show which required cloths, as in a pantomime, they had to be 'rolled' rather in the fashion of a window blind, but on a far larger scale. This was how most of the scene changes were done in 'Aladdin.'

The show which followed 'Aladdin' was 'Beyond The Fringe' which had been hugely successful in the early 1960's and launched the careers of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennet, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore. I got involved with the rehearsals for this, which included 'propping', going out and finding items which would be used during the show's rehearsal period, as well as setting, striking and generally stage managing the actual performances of the show.
"Beyond The Fringe" has some very famous sketches within it, including "Take A Pew", "One Leg To Few" and a really brilliantly funny pastiche of  Shakespeare. Of course we didn't have the original cast in our production. As with most 'rep' productions, which are, in effect, re-stagings of shows which have run in the West End, but have actors who have to be very versatile and play a range of different roles over a number of productions. I believe Giles Block was in the company when I was at Colchester, but I'm not sure whether he was in "Beyond The Fringe."
One of the productions in the season was "Billy Liar" by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.  This was an adaptaion of a book by Keith Waterhouse, and has since been made into a film, starring Tom Courtney, as well as a musical, "Billy" which starred Michael Crawford and was quite successful when it ran in the West End in the mid 1970's. It was also the basis for a situation comedy starring Jeoff Rawle. This was the first time I was responsible for 'The Book" for a show. This is the duty of stage management and whoever is responsible for this is not only in charge of prompting during rehearsals and the actual performance, but also for the general running of the show from the prompt corner, giving cues for lighting and sound, but also making sure the actors are on stage in time for their entrances. You are responsible for the prompt copy which has all the moves the actors make which are given during the blocking stage of rehearsals, which usually take place in a space away from the theatre, such as a church hall, although most modern and well-equipped theatres have their own purpose-built rehearsal spaces within their main buildings or can be some way away from the theatre. You are responsible for making sure the actors get their 'calls' for rehearsal, costume fittings and other things connected with the production. Another member of the stage management is responsible for sitting in during rehearsals and taking note of where props are used as well as where they are set, and then, later on in rehearsal, producing these props, from whichever source, hiring, begging or borrowing from local businesses around the town and taking care they are not broken or even stolen and then set in the correct place during rehearsals and then when the play is running in the theatre.  During the run of the play you have to 'call' the actors via Tannoy, giving the actors time to get to the stage where they may be waiting to go on, in their dressing room or the Green Room, the actors waiting room or common room if you like. I still don't know why this is referred to  as a Green Room, but it is a tradition of theatre for it to be called that. It isn't generally because of the colour as most of the Green Rooms I've been in over the years have never been painted or at least decorated the colour  green. It may be that green is a peaceful colour, but I'm not sure.

Family Summer Holidays- Part 5

The beach at Frinton, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, is really the town's best asset. The sand is washed by the tide twice daily and comes right up to the promenade. I was really good at making sandcastles, even though I say it myself. I also made quite elaborate towns and landscapes on the beach and some of them had a network of rivers which were fed from pools of water left when the tide went out. My younger brother, Sandy, has always been interested in cars, from an early age, and had a vast collection of model cars, both Dinky Toys and Corgi. He used the roads I had built to play with these cars. One day he must have lost one of these cars and we spent some considerable time hunting for it. The following day, I was digging another sandcastle and there below the surface of the sand was the lost car, a little sandy maybe, but safe and sound. Some time later, when the sand was removed and it was dried out, it became as good as new.

I do remember one incident which occurred when unfortunately some child with whom I went to school and his family came to stay in Frinton and had a hut only a few huts along from  ours. He attempted to destroy all my hard work and effort building a castle or road lay-out but me and my brothers managed to prevent too much damage. It is somewhat unfortunate that I don't remember his name but I think his father owned or ran a shoe-making business in Northampton if my memory serves, but he was obviously a spoilt little brat if that was the way he treated other people's work and effort.

Then there was Radio Caroline. This so-called 'pirate radio' station was set up and broadcast on board a ship which was moored in the North Sea just off Frinton. You could see it from the beach. This was outside what I think they call 'Territorial Waters', several miles out to sea from mainland Britain. They were, in effect, illegal, but that didn't stop them broadcasting. Something to do with interfering with broadcasts for such things as coastguard patrols, ambulance etc.  The then-government made several attempts to put a stop to their activities, but I can't remember exactly how these 'pirate' radio stations were closed down. In the end the BBC set up Radio One and all the BBC radio stations changed their names from Home, Light, Third etc to Radios 1,2,3 and 4. It wasn't until the 1980's that the Conservative Government bought in legislation to set up legal, local, commercial stations such as LBC, Capital Radio etc etc. I'm not exactly a pop music fan, but it was quite a newsworthy incident when the Radio Caroline ship was set adrift during a very heavy sea one night and drifted on-shore to  be beached on the Frinton shore. It was in all the newspapers and other media at the time.

* * * *

So, what else do I remember about holidays in Frinton? Shrimping. Using nets purchased from shops in the town, somewhere along Connaught Avenue. Collecting the shrimps in buckets and then cooking them on the Calor gas ring in the beach hut and eating them. I also recall a lobster, not one we'd caught ourselves. I think my father had been given it by some fisherman or something and taking it back to the house and it being kept in the kitchen, with it's claws tied together to stop it nipping all and sundry and then being cooked. I don't think my mother relished the idea of killing it and then boiling the poor thing. But I like lobster and I suppose you don't think so much about how they are killed when you are younger. I  was probably not aware of this, having been bought up on a farm and rearing calves, pigs and lambs and then sending them off to the abbatoir.

Then there was the very violent thunder storm over Frinton one night. It seemed to go on for hour after hour, the lightening causing a fire along the top of the cliffs and seeing the grass scorched the next day. The thunder sounded, from what I remember, very much like  a railway train running over rails, extremely loud and very frightening. I suppose I would have been nine or ten at the time.
Something else. Kite flying. My brother Sandy had been given this amazing box kite. Unfortunately he wasn't in the least interested in flying it, but I was. The Greensward at Frinton, as mentioned earlier in another post, is a grassy area that runs the entire length of the town's shore-side and as the winds are perfect for flying kites, blowing in from the sea and it was a perfect clear space, all adding to the perfect conditions. When out at it's furthest extent on it's line, it must have been really high. I don't think I've experienced kite-flying quite as good as at Frinton, perhaps the nearest to it would be at Dunstable Downs, just along the road from Whipsnade Zoo. It certainly kept me amused for many hours.

Family Summer Holidays- Part 4

Frinton holds more memories from when we went there for our summer holidays during the '60's. We stayed almost exclusively within Frinton, but there were one or two forays into the outside world and I do remember going to Walton-on- the-Naze, which is further up the coast, although we may have walked there along the sea-front. It can't be more than a couple of miles. There is a pier there, which Frinton has never had.  You can see this pier from Frinton. I have to admit that Frinton does have a sort of snobbish air about it. It has none of the, what I would call 'classic' seaside attractions such as a pier, which would have made Walton and even Clacton, which is further down the coast, so attractive to us children. The entertainments on these piers would have been a draw for us children and I seem to remember my mother taking us to Clacton one evening to go on the pier but I have an idea that she might not have approved of it, the sort of 'kiss-me-quick', candyfloss, bright neon lights and cheap entertainment not probably being to her taste. These resorts had summer shows on, with stars of stage and the world of pop music headlining. I recall that Leslie Crowther spent his holiday at Frinton, presumably he was in summer season at Walton or Clacton and chose Frinton to relax as it wasn't going to be quite so popular as either of the other resorts. I think he was starring in a popular children's television show on BBC television called "Crackerjack", at the time, as well as compering some sort of Saturday evening show or other.

Although Frinton doesn't have the classic 'summer season' style theatre entertainment, it does have the famous Frinton Summer Theatre. I think it may have been this which started me off on my interest in theatre. It remains, quite remarkably, the last remaining Equity standard company producing weekly repertory theatre in this country. They do seven plays, of a week each, over seven weeks. I worked in rep as first a Student A.SM. , then a fully-fledged A.S.M.(see earlier posts.) and worked my way up to D.S.M. I did three-weekly rep with some theatres I worked for, but never weekly. These theatres were subsidised with Arts Council and Local Authority money, but, unfortunately, these forms of theatre are virtually dead. Due, mostly, to Government cuts. Most theatres that are left and were your traditional 'rep' now have programmes made up of touring productions, although some companies do attempt to put on homegrown productions in short seasons that are similar to the traditional idea of 'rep.' One such company is the Royal Theatre, in Northampton. Some companies do co-produce plays, so that costs are spread further. 

The Summer Theatre in Frinton is in what is little more than a village hall, or, at least, that is what it looks like from the outside. It is apparently celebrating it's 75th anniversary in 2014. It has been the training-ground for some well-known names within the acting profession, such as Vanessa Redgrave, Gary Oldman, David Suchet and Lynda Bellingham. During the 70's, the period I was working in 'rep' you had to have an Equity card, Equity being the union for those working in professional theatre. You started off with a Provisional membership (a red card) and only got your Full Membership (blue) after you had worked 42 weeks on Equity contracts, and you could only work in professional theatre with a full Equity card. These 'rep' companies were where actors could learn their craft, playing a range of different parts in a fairly wide range of plays over a season which could run for 6 months to a year. One week you could be a lead in a Shakespeare play and the next you could be the butler, or maid or a minor part. You'd be performing one play whilst rehearsing the next one. The stage of the Summer Theatre is 17 feet by 13, which seems a remarkably small space. I can't imagine how they manage to perform on such a tiny stage, what with having a set, wings 'off-stage' and all the back-stage equipment that would be necessary to put on a show. And to produce something of a really amazingly high standard is even more remarkable.

Family Summer Holidays- Part 3

As I have mention in the earlier post, my father's yacht was the central reason for the holiday in Frinton-On-Sea. I think the sailing must have been particularly good along that stretch of the Essex coast. The boat he had which was called 'Amaranda' was a Jewel class yacht. It was clinker built, meaning it was made of overlapping lengths of timber made in the traditional manner. He had another yacht built of fibreglass of about the same size and later still a far larger yacht called 'Flashpoint' which was moored in the estuary at Brightlingsea and which was fitted out with a galley and sleeping accommodation , although it was quite cramped. I wasn't so keen on sleeping in that tiny space afore, as I got seasick with the motion of the boat and also some amount of claustrophobia in such a tiny space. This had a tender, a small rowing boat attached which was used to ferry us out to the mooring.  I remember that my Uncle Michael (my mother's brother, now, alas, dead.) was a very good sailor and would take command of "Flashpoint" because I think as Dad got older he found it quite difficult to manage. Dad had bought a small wooden rowing boat from somewhere in Colchester I seem to remember and took some duty as tender and was called 'Midge.' This was quite a basic sailing boat and could be sailed quite well by one person. Mum was good at sailing that alone and I think my brother James sailed that a few times. This was also sailed on the River Ouse near Cardington Mill, as we had a hut there which was used as a base for sailing and summer picnics, but, unfortunately, all of that had been swept aside when the business park was built.

The yacht would be taken down to be parked at the beach on arrival in Frinton. We had to go to the estate agent to get the keys for the house we had rented as well as the beach hut. I know that now it's quite fashionable to rent or own a beach hut at places such as Southwold, Frinton, Bournemouth and other seaside resorts, but when we went it made a very good base on the sea front. Frinton has an excellent beach, very fine sand between breakwaters or 'groynes' and the sea comes in right up to the level of the promenade and so washes the sand clean and makes an  excellent safe place for families with young children to have a holiday. Inside the hut (we had a different one each year, but I believe that they are all basically the same inside) there is an inner and outer area, the back area being lockable with double doors and which makes a good place to change when you go swimming. In that part of the hut there would be a Calor gas ring for boiling water for tea, a set of around six deckchairs, a picnic table and probably one or two other tables. In the front section of the hut there would be a benched area, so you could set up your table here and sit for meals or set up on the promenade at the front of the hut. 

There was a parking space on what was called the Greensward, a long stretch of grass which runs the whole length of the Frinton seafront. There is a slipway which runs down to the promenade and a further one which allows boats to be manhandled onto the beach and then launched. It was quite a strenuous task to haul the boat up and down these slipways, but I think at one point the car was used for this purpose.
As I said in the earlier post, it can't have been much of a holiday for my mother, because we stayed in a rented house in Frinton and this would mean there would still be meals to cook and we children would need to be looked after. Also, my mother and father sailed most days and knowing my father, who wasn't the most patient of men, it must have been quite stressful being a crew member for him. I can remember on several occasions being on board one of his yachts on the River Ouse and he wasn't patient, particularly if you hauled on the wrong sheet (rope) or moved at the wrong moment, as you had to if the boat was tacking into the wind, for example. If you didn't move fast enough you were very likely to be hit on the head very hard by the boom, the wooden 'stay' which kept the bottom of the mainsail fixed to the mast and moved about quite freely if not taken under control with whatever rope you happened to have in your hand and if not you'd get a lot of abuse from my father such as 'get out of the way, you idiot!' or words to that effect.
Quite a few family friends would congregate at the beach hut at Frinton. Not just my uncle Michael and his wife Gemma, but also a couple called Tim and Betty Smith.  They were a really nice couple, but they would argue with one another and would sit and bicker endlessly.  Can't have been much fun for my mother, inviting someone to tea and have to listen to them constantly bickering.
My brother Andrew appeared in 1961. I think after four boys my mother was keen to have a daughter. So it was a bit of a surprise when child number five was yet another boy. The Smiths, on the other hand, had been married for years and no baby appeared, but around a year after Andrew was born their one and only child appeared, called Ian. Funny little kid, bald, not very good looking, to say the least. In fact, possibly the inspiration for Yoda in the 'Star Wars' movies! I shouldn't make such comment, but never mind. Then there were the Boddy family, Ashely and Alison. Again, lovely people, but very noisy. I think Ashley bought my father's first boat, 'Amaranda.' He was another very good sailor. But as I say, whenever this family visited you needed to keep at arms length or wear earplugs as Ashley had/has a very loud laugh and the whole family makes a great deal of noise.
My Great Aunt Liz stayed at the Grand Hotel  which is on the seafront at Frinton and quite an imposing building.  She was one of my father's Scottish relatives, never married and was ancient even when I was a teenager.  She died at the grand old age of 95, in 1965, so almost 50 years ago. She makes me think of Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Ernest." Blind as a bat and just as deaf and with a huge nose, which, thank goodness, I didn't inherit. Imperious, to say the least, and although she wore a hearing aid she never seemed to have it tuned properly so it made that unfortunate whistling noise that hearing aids are prone to. You would find yourself repeating things endlessly if you had a conversation with her, which could make life very difficult. Anyway, she would come down to the beach several afternoons when we were there, but it would mean her being ferried around in cars and taken down to the beach as she couldn't walk far.
Andrew, as I've said, was the youngest of my parent's children. I can't imagine what looking after no less than five children would be like, not just feeding, clothing, birthdays, Christmas and so on. So it's no wonder that my mother needed some sort of help. So Andrew had someone to look after him when he was a baby up until be was around 9-10 I suppose. This lady was Miss Fuller. To this very day I'm not sure of her Christian name. It's odd, but it's true. She had been a seamstress and very good too, and had gone to our neighbour's at Cardington, the Porter's and used to do mending. Somehow or other she was sort of 'head-hunted' by my mother and came to work for us., doing virtually the same thing. I know, it's odd to us today, but people did mend clothes. It's not something that is done now, I should imagine, even with the 'recycling' generation and the need to be 'environmentally friendly.' I imagine this would be a left-over from the days of the Second World War and what followed with Austerity. Anyway, she had one afternoon of mending socks, darning etc and then when Andrew was born she used to take him for walks in his pram. Eventually she came more or less permanently as a sort of nanny, but I don't suppose she would have wanted to be called that. So she came with us when we went on holiday to Frinton. I don't know what the arrangement as regards payment. I suppose she was given something, but I don't know. But I suppose she was getting, in effect, a free holiday. At least it meant my mother got some sort of time to herself as Miss Fuller took virtually complete control of son number five. Things went very well with this arrangement until my grandmother  Ferriman came to Frinton. I'm not sure for certain whether she came for a day or two or whether she stayed with us, but she was another body for my mother to look after.
One afternoon there was something of a cat-fight between Miss Fuller and my grandmother. Don't ask me what it was about. It was in front of everyone on the promenade near the beach hut. My grandmother was going on  about something like who was looking after my brother, and Miss Fuller, who was an extremely strongwilled lady, put her foot down and said that SHE was looking after him. It was like something out of one of those comedies, almost fists flying, fur and feather. 'He's my grandson and I'm in charge of him!' from granny Ferriman and then 'He's my responsibility' from Miss Fuller (or words to that effect.) I'm not sure how it ended, but it must have been very embarassing for my mother. I think it may have been about who could take him for a walk along the promenade or something equally trivial. I know it must have caused no end of entertainment for all and sundry!

Family Summer Holidays- Part 2

Just looking at the road map and in particular the route to Frinton along the A120 evokes a lot of memories for me.  Mention of the names of the places along the route, such as Baldock, Buntingford, Puckeridge, Bishop's Stortford and so on wakes up a lot of memories. I knew the route well enough as a child and then again in the early 1970's when I used to drive it when I was an A.S.M. at Colchester Repertory Theatre and used to use this road when I went home for the weekend.  (Colchester Rep is no more. It was replaced by the Mercury Theatre in the early 1970's The foundation stone was laid by Eric Porter, who played Jolyon Forsyte in the 1960's BBC series."The Forstye Saga". I remember this from when I was working there. The old rep building, which was in the high street, had been an art gallery before it was converted into a theatre, and is now a building society or bank, I can't remember which.) It probably was quite dangerous in those days, particularly late at night (I used to leave Colchester after the evening performance, which would end around 10.30 p.m.) so driving on the A120 wouldn't  have been been very safe as I don't imagine there were many street lights along the long sections through open countryside.

I do remember that there was one thing that sticks in my mind. Somewhere in Dunmow or Coggeshall there was a tree at the side of the road which had been shaped into what appeared to be a table. I don't know whether it is still there, but it was something that, as children, we always managed to point out on the journey. I imagine you wouldn't be able to find it now, if it is still there, as it's most likely to be in the centre of a town and you now use a by-pass and not see it. That's one of the drawbacks of by-passes. You don't see the sights that you would have seen if you drive through the  centre of places and by-passes always seem to be routed through cuttings with high banks so you never see much of the surrounding countryside.

We had another sort of 'game' which was whoever saw the water tower which was near the entrance to Frinton and whichever of my brothers saw it would get a bag of sweets or something. Silly now, I suppose, but I imagine my mother, who would be driving the car, needed something to keep us occupied on the journey.

To enter Frinton you go through some gates, which are in actual fact part of a level crossing which goes over the railway line, and Frinton's railway station is one of the first buildings you see when you enter. As such, the railway line is the sort of 'outer wall' of the town, if you like. You drive in and down Connaught Avenue, which is the main shopping  street and runs right down to the beach. There is a sort of air about the place as if you've stepped back in time. Probably then, but not so sure now, as I haven't been there for at least 30 years. It's sort of stuck in a timewarp of the 1930's. Very genteel, and dare I say it, middle class. When we used to visit there were no pubs. I can't remember if there were any fish and chip shops, which seems very odd, considering it is a seaside town. You always associate the 'seaside' with fish and chips. Well, at least I do. There were bars in the hotels, but these seem to have been frequented by a very select few. A sort of feeling of one of those Agatha Christie mysteries. If not the setting for one, you can imagine  a television or film production company  using it for the location of something set in that period. A lot of the houses are built in the classic Art Deco style. Somewhere, also, you can imagine Noel Coward frequenting. Perhaps being the setting for one of his plays such as "Private Lives" although I know that was supposed to have been set on  the French riviera.

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Family Summer Holidays- Part 1

My family always went to the same place for our summer holidays when I was a child. This was to Frinton-On-Sea in Essex. It's between Colchester and Walton-On-Naze, which is a few miles further along the coast.  Clacton-On-Sea is the next resort down the coast from Frinton. We'd go for two weeks at the beginning of September each year, so I would miss the first few weeks of school. The reason for this was that my father was a farmer and he would want to go once the harvest was over. I think it may have been still being bought in as sometimes he would return home at some point and come back to Frinton. 

We went to Frinton basically so that my father could sail. He had his own yacht, Amaranda, which was taken to Frinton, towed by the family car, and was usually stuffed with suitcases and all manner of items found necessary for the holiday. This yacht had been built at  James shipyard in Brightlingsea, a town on the River Colne estuary, further down the coast and not far from Colchester. A good many years later we did occasionally have holidays in Brightlingsea and staying at a hotel near the harbour. I can't remember the exact name, but somewhere near the harbour. I know my parents went to Brightlingsea on their own a few times, which was quite a rarity for my mother, not having us children with her. I do remember staying with my grandparents at Mill Farm near Cardington when I was a child when my parents went on their own to Brightlingsea. This, unfortunately, is no more, and is now a business park. Sad to see a farm which has so many childhood memories cleared away to make way for something so mundane as a business park, but I suppose that's progress, or what passes for progress. The Bedford by-pass crosses some of the land.

My parents rented a house in Frinton each year, so, in some ways, it wasn't much of a holiday for my mother, as she still had to run the house very much as she had the family home at Malting Farm in Cardington, just outside Bedford. Also, there would be a beach hut on the promenade where we would spend the entire two weeks of the holiday. She would be organising food, having to do shopping and cooking meals at the beach hut, as well as the house.

My two elder brothers, James and Robert, never came with us. They would stay behind and presumably be involved with the harvest. Robert, in particular, was not interested in the sea, swimming or boats and was more into horses and riding. We would go with my two younger brothers, Sandy (Alexander) and Andrew, my youngest brother by around eleven years. The journey to Frinton has deep memories for me, almost as exciting as actually getting to our holiday destination. I know that now the road there has been up-graded and you drive mostly on dual carriageways that by-pass most of the larger towns and villages, but when we drove there, which would have been in the early to mid 1960's, you would have to drive through the major towns such as Braintree. There were some really narrow bits of road along the way and you would often get stuck behind large H.G.V. lorries, particularly near Puckeridge, which was (and probably still is) a major Sainsbury's distribution centre.