Person: The Company

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.

Smut’s Saga, or Santa and the Vikings!

Panto Viking fun. Nordic myth runs riot: valkyries, trolls, dwarves – and Father Christmas!

Long centuries divide the epic Norse saga from traditional pantomime, but the two genres share some similarities. Both are ritual entertainments in which time-honoured tales of derring-do, featuring a habitual cast of larger than life characters, are performed to delight a deeply involved audience.

This is an epic Norse saga set in a land of icy fjords and cold, grey seas. A tale of longships and trolls, Valkyries and Valhalla – but incorporating all the essential ingredients of traditional panto. Boundless audience participation, corny double-entendres, ingenious special effects, men dressed up as women, women dressed up as men. And all with the added bonus of a new story set against the vivid backdrop of Norse tradition – with no opportunity missed to exploit every Viking gag imaginable!

Wicked Viking Jarl, Smut the Smug, crosses the northern sea to ravage the coast of England, only to encounter rival Viking, Svein, Prince of the Blue Fjords, searching England for his Princess bride. The villain flees with no booty, except for three exceedingly naughty children, Tum, Dickon and Harald. But Smut is pursued back to his lair in Smutland by the children’s outraged and outrageous guardian, the indomitable Dame Dustpan, joined by Prince Svein, who agrees to help rescue the children in return for help tracking down his princess. But before they can complete their quest, our heroes have to outwit the monstrous Stoneheart, Lord of the Rock Trolls, and deal with Smut’s dotty but deadly accomplice, the witch, Helga Forkbeard.

Complete with mountains and fjords, dragonships, dwarves and giants, not to mention Santa Claus, the whole rich tapestry of Viking folklore is here. Skilfully blended with the enchantment, slapstick and audience participation of traditional pantomime.

Jack The Ripper

In the autumn of 1888, the East End of London was home to a sordid, brutalised community of prostitutes, immigrants, petty criminals and political renegades.

Potentially an explosive flashpoint behind the grand façade of Victoria’s London, the panic and terror that gripped the inhabitants of the slums and tenements during the series of murders attributed to the notorious ‘Jack the Ripper’ threatened to plunge the entire East End into riot and revolution, and shake the very foundations of the capital of the Empire.

‘Jack the Ripper’ was written for the stage in 1974 and features a score by Ron Pember, with book and lyrics by Pember with Denis De Marne. A musical reconstruction of the incidents relating to the historic East End murders is told through the company of the fictional Steam Packet Music Hall in Whitechapel, a device that presents an atmospheric commentary on the murders as opposed to a historic re-enactment, with the ensemble moving between real and fictional characters.

The production was first staged at the Player’s Theatre in London, opening on June 25th 1974  It subsequently transferred the production to the Ambassadors Theatre in September 1974, followed by the Cambridge Theatre in February 1975, and earned a nomination for ‘Best Musical’ at the 1974 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The show went on to debut in the United States in March 1979. Since the amateur production rights were released in 1976, ‘Jack The Ripper’ has remained a popular production choice with societies worldwide.

Ron Pember was a best known as an actor, with a career spanning several decades. He worked with both the National Theatre and the RSC and appeared in TV series such as ‘Only Fools and Horses’, ‘Red Dwarf’ and ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’. Coincidentally, he had a part in the 1979 film ‘Murder by Decree’ which starred Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes, as the famous detective attempts to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

The boisterous nature of the show, all rough edges and black humour, has a certain appeal to Theatre Workshop. We’d performed it before, back in 1983, when it was directed by Chris Argles. And we’d do it again, in the open-air, in 2006.

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.

Lionheart! or The Arabian Knights

Are you a sucker for the mysterious orient? Dashing bandits and svelte houris, idyllic oases and teeming souks, hawk-faced magicians, desert-defying caravans, corrupt Grand Viziers, gorgeous palaces, and Ray Harryhausen-style special effects? ‘Lionheart! The Arabian Knights’ is an eastern concoction into which every conceivable Arabian Nights cliché has been stirred, seasoned with a tiny twist of alternative history, and cunningly bound together in a traditional pantomime recipe, featuring lots of familiar ingredients and a dash of local flavour.

As part of his fiendish plot to defeat Richard the Lionheart, the evil Saladin sends his henchmen on a magic carpet to Merrie England, to abduct Richard’s Sweetheart, Thomasina. But Saladin’s bungling agents, Oshgosh and Babu, return instead with Thomasina’s irrepressible auntie, Dame Dollop – who quickly proves that the wicked Caliph has bitten off rather more than he can chew.

Thomasina meanwhile, travelling to join King Richard’s Crusade, encounters the dashing brigand, Hassan the Bandit. Hassan, (who may not be quite what he seems) is no friend to Saladin, and together with Thomasina they set out to rescue Auntie!

With the help of an assortment of genies, assassins, eunuchs, Turkish wrestlers, dancing girls and pantomime camels, Dame Dollop escapes from the harem to outwit Saladin, and allow Richard to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem, and all in time for Christmas Day!

A hilarious, original, and thoroughly entertaining pantomime, guaranteed to transport all involved to the land of the Arabian Nights.

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.

Robin Hood – The Truth Behind The Green Tights

“Feared by the bad, loved by the good” goes the song about Robin Hood, but in the case of Albert Ross, the distinction is not quite so clear-cut. For Albert is a coward, transferring his allegiance from Merry Men to Sheriff and back again at the drop of a hat – or rather, at the point of a sword. All of which lands Albert, his wife, Robin and Maid Marian in some very awkward situations…

There are a number of extraordinarily brilliant adaptations of the story of Robin Hood. From Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone’s still remarkable 1938 Hollywood movie ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, through to Michael Praed’s Celtic/pagan-tinged ‘Robin of Sherwood on TV from 1984 to 1986. ‘Robin Hood – The Truth Behind the Green Tights’ is not one of them. Written by David Neilson in 1984 and published the following year, the inclusion of ‘Will Scargill’ as a militant trade unionist member of the Merry Men may have had them rolling in the aisles then, when the Miners’ strike was fresh in the memory, but just a few years on that cutting edge topicality had been blunted beyond repair.

The inclusion of an everyman character into the mythical world of the legendary arboreal bandit could also have been a terrific idea, and indeed might still be one, but ‘Albert Ross’ with his out of place and not desperately funny name (Albert Ross / Albatross. Geddit?) was not it.

Tim did however provide a real moment of drama, a rarity in this show. During rehearsals with Richard and Paul as Gisbourne and The Sheriff, Tim stepped onto the thrust at the front of the stage only for it to collapse under him. Luckily the two others were right next to Tim, and caught him, one on either side, preventing his fall to the hall floor below. After all, we didn’t want to damage the parquet flooring…

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.

The Christmas Cavalier

The Witchfinder-General, Roundheads and Cavaliers in a festive panto of Olde England!

From 1642 to 1651, there was a war between the King and his Parliament. Parliament won the war, and King Charles lost his head…

Set in the time when the puritan Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, ruled England, this lively and magical panto opens with the arrival of dastardly Witchfinder-General Nicholas Grimnasty in a local village, intent on suppressing frivolous and ungodly Christmas festivities – and rooting out a few witches at the same time!

Grimnasty and his gormless Roundhead sidekicks, Matthew Smallpiece and the Stupid brothers, soon tangle with the outrageous Dame Dumplings, driving force behind the village Christmas party! Unfortunately, it’s not long before Dame Dumplings’ lovely niece Emma Sweetly has fallen foul of the wicked Witchfinder, and is thrown into Grimnasty’s grisly dungeon.

But the Witchfinder-General’s villainy comes to an extremely sticky end, after his efforts to spoil Christmas are thwarted by an unlikely alliance of Sir Daniel Dash, a bold and gallant cavalier, a dancing bear named Bottom, and three real witches, who could almost have wandered in from a certain blasted Scottish heath…

A brisk yet enchanting pantomime, offering a traditional festive flavour of Olde England, but played out before a very appealing and colourful new historical backdrop, with lots of excellent opportunities for most attractive costumes and settings.