Lesley Argles – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

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!

Animal Farm

One night, all the animals at Manor Farm gather in the barn to hear ‘Old Major’, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. The elderly pig dies soon after the meeting, but the animals — inspired by his philosophy of Animalism — plot a rebellion against the farmer, Jones. When Jones drunkenly forgets to feed the animals, they rise up, and Jones and his farmhands are chased away. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall. But what follows is far from the dream that Old Major promised…

‘All Animals Are Equal – But Some Are More Equal Than Others’

George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is a powerful and uncompromising allegory of the Russian revolution, with every character and event that takes place in his tale mirroring Russian history from October 1917 through to the Teheran Conference of 1943.

The succession of steps through which, by persuasion, propaganda, lies and force, Napoleon rises to power in ‘Animal Farm’ are a bitter parody of Josef Stalin’s ascent to dictatorship, and what Orwell saw as the ultimate betrayal of the Russian people.

A fable, a satire, a fairy story, ‘Animal Farm’ is one of the great works of English literature, and a revealing study of the effects of power.

The evocative, and by association, now chilling music chosen by the director to open the production was ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The same composer’s ‘Five variants of Dives and Lazarus’ was used to maintain the mood during the interval.

The Three Musketeers

France 1625.

A young nobleman called D’Artagnan leaves his family in Gascony, south-west France, and makes his way to Paris to seek his fortune and join the King’s Musketeers. Unfortunately he encounters Rochefort, Captain of the Cardinal’s guard at a rural inn, and after an ill-advised confrontation, loses his letter of introduction to M.de Treville, (the captain of the King’s Musketeers), his money and his sword. So, when he finally arrives at the French capital, his welcome is far from warm. Things take a turn for the even worse when his first meetings with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the best of the Musketeers, result in him challenging each of them to duels. Finally, taken under the wing of the Three Musketeers rather than being killed by them, the young Gascon finds himself embroiled in the machinations of the cunning Cardinal Richelieu and his deadly agent, Milady de Winter, with plans to dishonour the Queen of France herself. A tale of high adventure, full of fun, swordplay and affairs of the heart…

Originally written by Alexandre Dumas (in collaboration with his regular ghost writer Auguste Maquet) and published in 1844, this swashbuckling historical tale became one of the most enduring adventures in literature, challenged only by, perhaps, ‘Treasure Island’. Numerous adaptations have been made, for stage and screen, including musicals, animation, and even an opera. The script that Chris Argles chose to direct was by Willis Hall, and had been published just the previous year, 1995. Although it keeps to the story, more or less, inevitably some liberties are taken and Hall leans into the humour, no doubt one reason for its selection.

It has passed into Workshop legend that Mike Brown, playing, or rather completely inhabiting the role of Porthos, at one point during the production ran across the stage completely naked, except for a strategically placed broad-brimmed musketeer hat (with a large feather). The part demanded it, obviously.

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!

Wyrd Sisters

Terry Pratchett is rightly regarded as one of the fantasy genre’s most popular and successful authors. He is without doubt one of its most prolific, with a string of best-selling novels set on his imaginary Discworld, a planet-sized disc that sits on the backs of four huge elephants, who in turn stand on the back of an enormous turtle called the Great A’Tuin as it swims through interstellar space.

His books frequently parody the vast body of ‘sword and sorcery’ literature that has been spawned by generations of Tolkien imitators, but he doesn’t stop there. Social comment is often interwoven into his humorous tales, and then there’s Shakespeare, whose plots and themes have been known to appear. ‘Wyrd Sisters’, for instance, seems to resemble at times a certain Scottish play, at others ‘Hamlet’. ‘As You Like It’ and ‘King Lear’ get a look in too.

‘Wyrd Sisters’ was Pratchett’s sixth Discworld novel, written in 1988, and the first to feature the Lancre coven of witches, composed of Magrat Garlick, Gytha ‘Nanny’ Ogg and Esmerelda or Esme ‘Granny’ Weatherwax. Favourites of both the readership and Pratchett himself, they would go on to feature in a number of his other books. In neopagan traditions, there exists the Triple Goddess, the maiden, the mother and the crone, and Pratchett has knowingly taken this as a model.

In the play, adapted from the novel by long-time Pratchett collaborator Stephen Briggs, King Verence I of Lancre is murdered by his scheming cousin, Leonal, Duke Felmet, after his ambitious wife persuades him to do so. However, a fleeing servant manages to rescue Verence’s son and heir, along with the King’s crown, and both are given to the witches, who in turn pass them onto a troupe of travelling actors. The crown is hidden in the props box and the boy will be brought up as the actor/manager Olwyn Vitoller’s son. The witches understand that in the fullness of time, destiny will take its course and the child, Tomjon, will grow up to defeat Duke Felmet and take his rightful place as king. Of course, it doesn’t turn out like quite like that…

We’d like to give our particular thanks to both Stephen Briggs and Terry Pratchett for giving us permission to stage ‘Wyrd Sisters’ now. The authorised adaptation hasn’t actually been published yet, so we’re grateful to get a head start on the rest of the amateur theatre brigade.

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!

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.

Oliver!

‘Oliver!’ is a stage musical written by Lionel Bart, and adapted from Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel ‘Oliver Twist’. The tale of a young, innocent, orphaned workhouse boy, who falls in with thieves and pickpockets before finding his fortune, it premiered at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1960 before transferring to the New Theatre in St Martin’s Lane (Now the Noel Coward Theatre), opening on the 30 June that year and running for what was then a record 2,618 performances. It was the first musical based on a Charles Dickens story that had actually been a success in any real sense.

The musical, very much simplified from the book, contains song after song that will stay with you, catchy beyond belief, from ‘Food, Glorious Food’, ‘Consider Yourself’ and ‘I’d Do Anything’ to ‘Oom-Pah-Pah!’, ‘You’ve Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two’ and ‘Reviewing the Situation’. ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ is as powerfully emotional as anything that has ever been sung on a West End stage.

Bart, real name Lionel Begleiter and descended from Galician Jews, was called a musical genius at the age of just six. He started his songwriting in amateur theatre, and was eventually talent-spotted by Joan Littlewood and joined her Theatre Workshop. His golden era was the late fifties and early sixties, when he wrote hit records for Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Anthony Newley, picking up numerous Ivor Novello awards. He wrote the theme to the James Bond film ‘From Russia With Love’ in 1963. But despite earlier successes, it was ‘Oliver!’ that made him a truly household name. Funnily enough, Bart couldn’t read or write music. The music for ‘Oliver’ was transcribed by a man called Eric Rogers, famous for writing the music scores for twenty one of the ‘Carry On’ movies. Bart would would hum the tunes while Rogers wrote down the notes.

In 1969 the movie of ‘Oliver!’ was released, and one might have thought life was good for the composer. However, Bart’s follow-up musicals had failed to recapture the glory of his most famous show, with ‘Twang!!’ (opening in late 1965) closing after awful reviews, mostly empty houses, and only 43 performances. It was the most expensive flop the West End had ever seen up to that point and wiped out Bart’s personal fortune. Nor could ‘Oliver!’ help him out. He had sold the past and future rights to his show to entertainer Max Bygraves in 1959 for just £350.

Oh What a Lovely War!

As 1914 began, Europe was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. On the 28 June, That spark was provided by a young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Pricip, who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the streets of Sarajevo. Not just Europe, but the world caught fire. By the time the armistice was declared on the 11 November 1918, millions had died.

It was a hideous conflict. Germany had hoped for a repeat of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, fast moving and decisive, over with complete and resounding success inside six months. It was not to be. The stalemate of the Western Front, with miles of trenches, mud and barbed wire, is the overarching image of this period.

On Armistice Day 1962, Gerry Raffles was listening to the BBC Home Service, and a programme called ‘The Long Long Trail’, written by Charles Chilton. It was a documentary about the First World War, interspersing facts and statistics with reminiscences and popular songs of the day. He thought it would provide a good basis for a new production, and broached the subject with his partner, Joan Littlewood, the prime mover in Theatre Workshop, a group she’d set up in 1945 with Ewan McColl. She hated the idea, but Raffles had brought Chilton along, and the two played and sung a number of the songs. Eventually she was persuaded that perhaps the idea had merit after all.

The show was developed through improvisation, and Littlewood had very definite ideas about what would and would not be admissible on the stage. No khaki or uniforms for instance. Instead the cast would wear pierrot costumes, taken from the Comedia dell’Arte, in order to provide some form of ironic contrast.

The production debuted at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on the 19 March 1963 to rave reviews. However, a transfer to the West End seemed unlikely, as the official censor was unprepared to authorise it. The intervention of Princess Margaret, who having watched a performance, discreetly bent the ear of the Lord Chamberlain, changed that, and it opened at Wyndham’s Theatre on the 20 June.

A film version followed in 1969, directed by Richard Attenborough, and with a screenplay written by thriller writer Len Deighton. Filmed in and around Brighton, notably on the now derelict West Pier, it dispensed with the pierrot costumes and thoroughly embraced the military uniforms. Littlewood loathed it.

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.