Caroline Dawe – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

Robin Hood

The Woodman has been Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s ‘local’ for the last fifteen years now – the nearest decent pub to our home base, the Coulsdon Youth and Social Centre in Chipstead Valley Road. Every Monday and Wednesday evening, TWC members can be found quenching their thirst in The Woodman after a hard evening’s rehearsing!

So when we set ourselves a challenge – staging a play in the open air, the gardens of our favourite hostelry seeming like an obvious choice. Fortunately our obliging hosts, Chris and Linda Matthews, (although probably not quite realising what they were letting them selves in for) fully embraced the idea, and you could hardly choose a more appropriate play to be presented in the open air than ‘Robin Hood’.

A ‘Robin Hood’ staged in the open air among real trees and under real stars is quite a different, and very special, proposition to one staged in a theatre or hall.

Although the popular mythology of a medieval Robin had evolved over many centuries, his origins as a powerful manifestation of the Wildwood can be traced back in time, beyond any supposed historical roots, to pre-Christian folklore. Folk plays on the theme of Robin Hood have an ancient pedigree stretching back to at least the thirteenth century. Such plays would have been a familiar entertainment to the common people of the time – and were of course customarily presented in the open air.

Our current production is a free adaptation of a quite recent American script – which in turn was a fairly straight retelling of what we consider to be the most common elements in any recounting of the legend of Robin Hood.

And so began what became our traditional open-air summer production. We would perform in the beer garden at The Woodman every summer until 2010, our last production in 2009 being an adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s ‘Lord and Ladies’. A number of unsympathetic landlords who simply failed to understand the numbers of additional people we were bringing to the pub to eat and drink each year, a remodelling of the beer garden that didn’t seem to help the pub and certainly worked against us, and then the building of a new cricket pavilion next door with floodlighting that overspilled into the area we were using – all contributed to us taking the decision to move elsewhere. But in 1993, it was a marvellous new experience and one we enjoyed, and would continue to enjoy, for many years.

The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is one of the classics of 20th Century theatre. A fictionalised (or at least in part) account of the witch trials that took place between 1692 and 1693 in the small settlement of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, New England. Miller wrote it in 1953 not as a historical piece, but as an allegory for McCarthyism, rampant at the time of his writing, where people were shamelessly persecuted for alleged Communist ties, without evidence. The accusation in and of itself was considered damning enough regardless of its origin, and there was the link to that earlier, dark time.

At best, ‘The Crucible’ was an ambitious reach for Workshop, but this was a ‘troubled’ production, as they call it in some circles. Originally slated to be the Spring 1990 production, it had been proposed by Christine Blake and Wendy Cole, who, it was intended, would co-direct. However, the project was almost completely derailed when both of them left the group. This left Paul Ford, who had been drafted in as an assistant director, to carry on in their stead but with no real vision for what the show should look like. One of the immediate difficulties was the presence in the cast of the key character of Tituba. Although her ultimate origin is disputed, it was thought that she was Barbadian, i.e. from the island of Barbados. No-one in the existing membership of the time could pass themselves off as such, and even in 1991, ‘blackface’ was a no-go. And so Paul elected to shift the entire thing into space. Salem became a settlement of puritan theocratic colony on a planet orbiting a distant star. It covered off the Tituba problem, but of course caused others.

The staging was abstract, geometric shapes painted to look as if they’d been scavenged from old starship hull-plating. They could be moved to form different combinations, which would represent various rooms and locations. An over-sized fan behind a grill turned throughout, with a ever-present ‘tic’ as its malformed blades hit the grill.

Despite some eventual outstanding performances, not least from the young girls in the cast, it nearly didn’t make it. The first weekend’s performances were billed as ‘previews’ as even at that last stage, the production was not pulling together. The review picked out that there were beautiful moments, and as ever, Madgwick was right. When it worked, there were some truly excellent scenes, but overall it really didn’t do the script justice.

Macbeth

The ‘Scottish’ play… or so some in the business call ‘Macbeth’, supposedly because of some ill-luck that follows the play around. We don’t believe it. The fact that Paul, who had just been cast as Macbeth himself, fell while running for a bus and broke his arm, was purely coincidence.

But putting superstition aside, what is ‘Macbeth’? Viewed from one perspective, it’s a tragedy, where a good man, a good soldier, finds himself coerced into making appalling decisions that ultimately lead to he and his wife’s death. Towards the end, reviewing the bloody path he’s taken, he is saddened but no less determined to see the story through to what he believes ultimately will be a victorious end, only to find that victory dashed from his blood-stained hands by a question of semantics. Taking another view, it’s a history. Macbeth was indeed King of Alba (Scotland), from 1040 to 1057, but the real man was no tyrant seizing the throne through murder and deception. Macbethad mac Findlaech, or Macbeth MacFinlay as the name is Anglicised, was the Mormaer (Earl) of Moray when King Duncan I led an army against him. Duncan died in battle, and Macbeth succeeded to the throne, where he stayed, unchallenged, for seventeen years. ‘The Red King’ as he was known, was regarded as a generous man, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050. However, Macbeth died of wounds incurred at the battle of Lumphanan in 1057, at the hands of King Duncan’s son Malcolm, and Macbeth’s son Lulach was assassinated the following year, giving Malcolm the throne. King James VI of Scotland claimed a bloodline from Malcolm, so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising to find Macbeth’s character so sorely abused. Shakespeare knew his audience.

The photoshoot for Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s production took place at Bodiam Castle, where, in those days, they didn’t mind a large group of people turning up in the car park to change into studded leatherette armour and start waving swords. From main gates to battlements we posed, looking suitably mean and moody, as befitted the production. Then it was decided that we should attempt a more active series of shots. Gathered at the main gatehouse, we would wait for the signal and then charge toward photographer Mark Hobbs. On the second run, Mark was joined by one or two camera-wielding tourists, on the third, several more. On the fourth and final, it seemed like we had a coach load of them. Fascinating to think that in a number of old photo albums scattered across some part the globe, the cast of TWC’s ‘Macbeth’ is immortalised, and those tourists still have no idea what on earth they had photographed.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s first flirtation with Shakespeare was, somewhat inevitably, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Although it seems such a staple of the theatre, both professional and amateur, its attractions are many and not the least of those is the ability to mould it, change it and make it unique to the group and the actors performing in it. Which suits TWC. The show itself, though undeniably funny, is an oddity, if you look at it with anything more than a scant glance. The event that draws it all together is the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, one the legendary slayer of the Minotaur, the other the Queen of the Amazons, and yes, in some versions of the myth of Theseus, these two characters did marry. But for all their lauded provenance, here they are ciphers, showing little real character in the few lines that they have at their disposal. The four lovers bear classical Greek names, all in accord with their part in the court of Athens, but the rude mechanicals do not despite being subjects of Theseus and working within Athens. Shakespeare drops the facade for these clowns, and calls them as they are, English tradesmen. One does wonder why, in Shakespeare’s mind, this division should exist, where the nobility have exotic names and the working classes not. Was he attempting to make them more identifiable to the groundlings? We may never know.

Two of the rude mechanicals would remain rude across two further TWC productions of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Chris Argles, here showing us his ‘Bottom’, would go on to play ‘Peter Quince’ in 1996, and then ‘Tom Snout’, the tinker in 2016. Tim Young would move from playing ‘Peter Quince’, carpenter and frustrated amateur director and impresario, to ‘Snug the joiner’ in 1996. Clearly a part he enjoyed, he reprised it in 2016 too.

One other thing remained a constant. The donkey head. Created for this show by Caroline Dawe using chicken wire, papier mache and fur fabric, it adorned the heads of Chris Argles, Paul Ford and Richard Lloyd in successive productions, and remains in readiness for the next revival.

The overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was the Cello Concerto in E Minor by Edward Elgar. The interval music was ‘The Lark Ascending’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

All incidental music used during the production was traditional, arranged by Theatre Workshop Coulsdon, with the exception of ‘Philomel with Lullaby’, the music for which was composed by Mark Taylor.