Person: Kevin Gibbons

The Dracula Spectacula

It’s been seventeen years since Theatre Workshop Coulsdon first staged ‘The Dracula Spectacula’. At the time it was regarded by the group as probably the biggest and best production that had been performed by them up to that point (we’d only been in existence seven years by that time), involving over 50 people and having a full band.

1995 will be our 25th anniversary year, and we decided that we’d start the celebrations early, by revisiting what was a landmark production for the group.

Amazingly only two of those fifty members who were involved in the 1977 production are actively talking part this time – those being Chris Argles, the director who played Dracula in the original production, and Tim Young, who will recreate his role as Hans, the Innkeeper.

So, how well has ‘The Dracula Spectacula’ stood the test of time? Was it really the terrific show that we fondly remembered, or have the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia left us with a false impression? Well, let’s be honest, we had to make some changes to the script. Seventeen years doesn’t seem like a long time, but its enough to make some of the dialogue, and the characterisations, sound dated. A number of the songs too, which may have knocked them un-dead back in the day, really don’t cut it now, and so we’ve replaced them with exuberant pastiches of songs that you might just have heard before.

What you see tonight then is very much a brand-new incarnation – albeit of an old favourite, resurrected and rising from its dusty resting place with a whole new lease of life.

Whether this is the first or second time you’ve seen Theatre Workshop Coulsdon perform ‘The Dracula Spectacula’ we hope you enjoy the experience, and live to tell the tale!

The Mummy – The Panto

A brand-new and original pantomime from the fevered imagination of Mark Taylor, who wrote the script, directed the show and the music as well as played piano and keyboards. That’s dedication. Or possibly he’s just a control freak. Either way, this unique tale follows the adventures of a daring expedition into Egypt, in search of the tomb of Imhotep, lost to history thousands of years ago. Professor Pottering and Rose Garden not only have the threat of the evil Ardet Bey to contend with, and the curse that surrounds the long-dead ancient Egyptian ruler, but Mrs Beryl Pie’n’mash, foisted upon them by the needs of a pantomime to contain at least one man dressed as a woman with no dress sense and make-up applied in the dark with a trowel. There is nothing like this Dame.

Brokers men Muk-Itup and Kok-itup are on hand to help carry out Ardet Bey’s malicious wishes, but incompetently, of course, and there’s a four piece band to accompany a dozen songs all hand-picked and adapted to amuse and entertain.

All in all, a trip to the sun-scorched desert by the banks of the Nile with Theatre Workshop Coulsdon is a great way to spend a cold December evening.

The Three Musketeers – Le Panteau

Our pantomime version of ‘Treasure Island’ was not only immense fun for us to do, but proved to be a big hit, not just here in Coulsdon but in the wider world of amateur theatre. In the two years since its publication, there have been over 60 productions of our tongue-in-cheek swashbuckling tale!

So, what better reason to give another classic story of adventure and derring-do the pantomime treatment. Like ‘Treasure Island’, ‘The Three Musketeers’ transcends age and generations, and has slipped across the border from literature into folklore. Written originally in 1844, there have been so many adaptations over the years, across so many media, that people who are perfectly familiar with the characters, the plot and the musketeers’ bold call to arms, have never read so much as a word of Alexandre Dumas’ original tale. Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan are no longer confined to the printed page, they are creatures of myth, with a life all their own.

So, our pantomime is not so much a spoof of the book, as a pastiche of the very idea of ‘The Three Musketeers’, only taking those parts of the plot and the characters that easily lend themselves to being funny. Yes, it does bear some resemblance to the original, but only very loosely (probably about as much as the usual Hollywood treatment). One very significant difference to most versions is that in ours, D’Artagnan and the other gallant comrades in arms are all played by women.

It’s our opinion that the female of the species can swashbuckle as well any male, but rarely are they given the chance. Well, here’s that chance, and alongside Dame D’Artagnan (the would-be musketeer’s aunt) and a pantomime snail (yes, really) they will fight for honour, justice and outright silliness, along with some excellent songs.

‘All for one, and one for all!’*

*For the record, Dumas may have used this as the Musketeers motto and made it famous, but guess who wrote it and used it first? Yep, William Shakespeare, in his narrative poem of 1594, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’. We’ll not be making a panto out of that.

The Fairy Godfather

In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola gave us the gangster epic ‘The Godfather’. Set in 1940’s New York, it centred on the criminal empire of the Corleone family, led by Marlon Brando’s iconic Don Corleone, and it single-handedly set the tone for American Mafia/Mob/Gangster movies to follow ever since. Nowhere did it say anything about pantomimes.

Richard Lloyd made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. He’d written a pantomime that less than delicately mashed up a bucket of well-used mafia gangster tropes, spread them over a comedy base, added some spicy panto sauce and served them up with side order of rollicking good songs, finishing with a rousing (everybody join in!) rendition of ‘That’s Amore!’. There are good fairies, evil villains, a dame and a gondola-full of Italian cheese gags. You just have to look at the cast list.

So we had to put it on. Really, we had to. And now you gotta to watch it, capisce?

Cut yourself in for a pizza the action tonight.

The Christmas Curse Of Fu Manchu

Created by English author Sax Rohmer back in 1910, Doctor Fu Manchu can rightly lay claim to being one of earliest ‘Super-villains’, a man whose insidious plotting and scheming would, if not stopped by his heroic rival Denis Nayland Smith and his like, have brought down Western civilisation, and ensured the final victory of ‘The Yellow Peril’. Rohmer, whose real name was the somewhat more ordinary Arthur Ward, lived for a while just down the road, in a house called Little Gatton, on Gatton Road, Reigate.

However, he could not have guessed that one day his evil creation would sink to the level that Mark Taylor has devised in his latest pantomime adventure, with the eradication of every Santa Claus on the planet!

Fu Manchu will surely not have it all his own way. Not when faced with the might of Scotland Yard’s finest, Inspector Burke, with assistance from the uniformed (or is that uninformed?) branch in the shape of WPC Shapely, along with PC Manly and Sergeant Duffem. And then there’s Lavinia. Lavinia Smythe-Bottonne to those who know, Dame to you. If you take-away just the one thing about her, it’s that she’ll not stand for any oriental skulduggery. She might sit of course, if the seat is comfortable enough, but obviously not the ones in the hall that you’re sitting on.

(The Director would like to point out that no real Santa Clauses were harmed in the course of making of this pantomime, and that all Santas appear by kind permission of the REAL Father Christmas, who is, as we all know, busily preparing for Christmas in Lapland at this very moment.)

Cinderella Interstellar!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a pantomime that looked quite a lot like ‘Star Wars’…

Take Cinderella and her ugly sisters and then thrust them into a world of science-fiction adventure, inhabited by characters that are nearly, but not quite, those from the epic blockbuster trilogy of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

A cocky, star-faring smuggler and his hairy co-pilot, a kid who’s a whiz behind the controls of space fighter, a monk-like individual wise in the ways of the Source, a black-clad villain in a full-face helmet with breathing difficulties and an army of soldiers who can’t hit a Death Star at close range. They’re all there, just not as you knew them.

Throw in the best Cantina band this side of Tatooine to help belt out some brilliant songs, and you’ve got a powered up panto ready to do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

This is the panto you were looking for.

Treasure Island – The Panto, or ‘Panto Walks The Plank’

‘Treasure Island’, that perennial favourite of British children since its first publication, might seem like an obvious candidate for panto treatment. However, actually arriving at a well-rounded pantomime, incorporating all the essential elements of that genre but also sticking fairly strictly to the plot and characters of Stevenson’s great novel, poses a few problems!

So if ‘Panto Walks The Plank!’ gets under way as a close pastiche of ‘Treasure Island’, you might notice it change tack part way through, in order to accommodate a boarding party of pirate clichés inspired by a wider literature.

After all, as any fan of the Hollywood pirate epics of the 1930s and 1940s will tell you, ‘Treasure Island’ (one of the most famous adventure stories in English literature) is fatally flawed. There’s absolutely no love interest. In fact there are no women at all, with the exception of Mrs Hawkins, and she’s written out of the plot by page 27!

Now, no good pirate movie was truly complete without the love interest, usually represented by Maureen O’Hara. Or the presence of the dastardly Spanish, immaculately attired, elegantly presented and constantly scheming. In fact, the two elements were so quintessential that they were frequently combined through the well-worn dramatic device of ‘Swashbuckling hero falls for the haughty yet gorgeous daughter of the wicked Spanish governor’. So, expect to find both in our version too,

There are other important omissions from ‘Treasure Island’ that undermine its credentials as a bona-fide all-round classic pirate story. For instance, absolutely no-one walks the plank! Now, as it happens, that’s probably because no-one ever really did walk the plank. People who really know their pirates will tell you that this infamous punishment was simply the macabre whimsy of the Victorians and their overheated imaginations. However, if you’re set on telling a good old-fashioned blood and thunder tale of skulduggery on the high seas, you’ve got to include it. It’s part of the tradition.

Being a pantomime also dictates certain changes to the story. For instance, no-one is horribly murdered. Any violence is strictly of the gratuitous slapstick variety. And of course, Long John’s legendary parrot serves splendidly as a pantomime animal. This one even talks! And a ‘Crimson Parakeet’ does have a certain resonance with the 1952 Burt Lancaster comedy adventure movie, ‘The Crimson Pirate’, filmed in glorious Technicolour!

So, shiver your timbers and splice your mainbrace, while Theatre Workshop heaves to and delivers a hefty broadside of fun and adventure. And you may lay to that, arrrrrh!

Panto Goes West

Saddle up your horses and load your six-guns! This rootin’ tootin’ script (also known as ‘The Ballad of Hamster Gulch’) is headin’ back to the Old West for a rip-roaring pantomime adventure. All the very best of traditional pantomime, including custard pies, explosions, amazing costumes, and masses of audience participation, but with the added attraction of a brand new story and setting, way out on the prairie! From quick draws to man-eating saloon doors, and from bandidos to baked beans, not a Wild West cliché is omitted, and no opportunity missed to lasso the audience into the action!

Our tall tale relates the fiendish efforts of Badman Jake McCabe and his redskin sidekick, Speaks Like A Rattlesnake, to set Big Chief Running Buffet on the warpath – all in order to spark off a range war and get the Indians driven onto a reservation. With Running Buffet and his people out of the way, McCabe and his mad, bad hombrés, Dopey Hobart and The Cactus Kid, can get their sticky hands on the gold buried beneath them thar ancient burial grounds of the Magwumpa Sioux.

Fortunately, McCabe’s wicked plot is thwarted by an unlikely alliance of Clint Cougar of the Texas Rangers, Red Indian maiden Sings Like Mountain Stream, ornery ol’ timer Gus Varmint, and Clint’s outrageous auntie over from England – Calamity Dame!

Dazzle

In a world of multi-million dollar science-fiction movies, it’s a brave amateur theatre group who takes on a supposed ‘out of this world’ musical play that was intended to parody the much-loved TV series (and subsequent movies) of ‘Star Trek’. John Gardiner also wrote ‘The Dracula Spectacula’ which Workshop performed back in 1977, and would again, no doubt (at least in part) why Chris Argles chose it to direct. However, like its predecessor, the story is only very loosely based on its source material.

At some point in a far-flung future, Sam Galactic of the Star Blade Squadron is welcomed as a hero by Sekurikor, the President of Homeworld, and entrusted with his first command, that of the starship Sunburster One. He and his crew are then given the relatively mundane task of taking the president’s daughter, Dazzle Star, to a finishing school on Procyon. En route, they are intercepted by a Red Star vessel commanded by Big Olga, and then have Dazzle Star kidnapped by spacefaring Irish pirates, before finding out the true purpose of the mission. To complete it, and guarantee the future of mankind, Sam and Dazzle Star must throw themselves back in time to the 1960’s and survive an unlikely encounter with a greasy, leather-clad motorcycle gang led by the daunting Sue Zuki.

Of course, that’s only how it started out. Though the story may have remained much the same, Workshop took exception to a lot of the treatment meted out to the various characters. In the script, the ship’s doctor inexplicably sounded like one-time world champion boxer Muhammad Ali. That went. The random Irish pirates were ditched in favour of the classic Trek villains, Klingons, with all the gags that you can imagine the name entails, and their song became a spoof of ‘Pink Elephants On Parade’ from Walt Disney’s ‘Dumbo’ (Why? Ask Mark Taylor. But it was great fun.).The captain developed a middle initial to become Sam T Galactic. The ship lost a number and gained a ‘USS’ prefix, and the set of the ship’s bridge was as close to an exact copy of the original Enterprise as our limited budget could manage. The wardrobe guidelines were thrown out too, and in came fairly faithful reproductions of the classic Starfleet uniforms.

We boldly went where Samuel French didn’t expect us to go.

The Recruiting Officer (1992)

It’s been said that ‘The Recruiting Officer’ reflects the warm afterglow of Blenheim’, and certainly, for a play written in a time of war, it is a confident and optimistic work. The War of the Spanish Succession had begun in May 1702, the latest in a series of European wars triggered by the ambitions of Louis XIV, ‘The Sun King’, ruler of France. Queen Anne had succeeded to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland just two months previously, and she immediately appointed the John Churchill, the Earl of Marlborough, as the Captain-General of her armies. As war began, Marlborough was made supreme commander of the combined Anglo-Dutch army, and the campaign began well for him. So well that in December 1702, Queen Anne made him a Duke. The apex of his success however, lay at Blenheim, in Bavaria, on 13 August 1704, where a masterclass of planning and logistics paired with tactical and operational brilliance saw his forces defeat the Franco-Bavarian army so heavily that Bavaria was no longer capable of continuing the war. Patriotic fervour reached a crescendo, with even his enemies at court acknowledging the scale of his triumph. The Queen gave him the royal manor of Woodstock, on which Blenheim Palace would be built. And it is into this atmosphere that the play invites its audience.

George Farquhar, in 1704, was a soldier, having taken a commission as a Lieutenant of Grenadiers in the Earl of Orrery’s Infantry Regiment as a means of earning money. His recent plays had been unsuccessful, and he’d married a woman the previous year who already had three children from a prior marriage. He was practically penniless. That summer, his duties took him to Shrewsbury for a recruitment drive, and it was his experiences there that led to his writing of ‘The Recruiting Officer’. Supposedly he even wrote it in Shrewsbury, while staying in his lodgings at The Raven Inn.

The play, when it opened on the 8 April 1706 was a huge and immediate success, but his share of the income from the play was barely enough to cover his outstanding debts. Worse, he had contracted tuberculosis, and had to resign his commission in the army. Weakened by illness, he wrote one last play, ‘The Beaux Stratagem’ in just six weeks during the autumn of that year, and it opened on Drury Lane in March 1707 to universal acclaim. Sadly, its success came too late, and in May 1707 he died, aged just 30 years old.

‘The Recruiting Officer’, played in the traverse along the length of the main hall at the Coulsdon Youth and Social Centre, turned out to be the last, to date, summer production to take place there. From the following summer of 1993, Theatre Workshop Coulsdon would take its shows out into the open air. ‘The Recruiting Officer’ too would see the open air, being revisited by the group only six years on, in 1998.