Notes from the Stage Manager's Box (12 page)

Then later that day was the first time I had ever known him express something close to anger or irritation with the production team. One of the stage directions was a member of the Pink Ladies talking about twinkies.

The name had come up a few times in production talks but no one knew what twinkies were. They were up there with
Trevor Gash and
anti-macassars. One or two people tried to find out what they were and the nearest
estimations were cigarettes, contraceptives or items of feminine hygiene.

People growing up today are spared the problems of ignorance. You just look the word up using Google. No internet in 1985!

A few months ago a new shop opened in my home town selling traditional sweets and one of the delicacies in the window were twinkies. My daughter loves them. They are sponge fingers filled with cream similar to a swiss roll that hasn’t been rolled or as more elderly people might recall, an artic roll.

The thing was, we didn’t have any twinkies. Maybe John’s irritation was not aimed at either Roy or me personally. It felt like it at the time but I think he was just annoyed that with everything else
perfectly
in place and to the detail he had requested we had let him down with a very small item of props.

The incident blew over as soon as it arose. I think we substituted a form of chocolate bar and as it was a good bet that the audience wouldn’t
have
known what a twinkie was
either
we were on pretty safe ground.

There were a few casting problems along the way and one of them was the role of Teen Angel. I think that once again having performed it in rehearsal the cast and crew convinced John that there was no better person to fill the part than himself. We were so right. He was a smash hit with the audience.

(John Hebden as Teen Angel)

The other role was the DJ Vince Fontaine. A lot of the men auditioned for it but in reality no one seemed to fit the part. Someone who had been a member of the chorus for a few shows was Mike Vincent. He was slightly unbecoming as a DJ being a bi
t shorter and a bit more tubby
tha
n a mid-1950’s American DJ might
have looked.

As opening night rushed towards us John gave in to pressure and let Mike play the part.

I would not lie, he was not the best ever Vince Fontaine. He had the energy and the enthusiasm but he was no sex idol on the microphone. However the rest of the cast were happy and that always helps.

Penny Collin’s boy friend
Clive Alexander
was an actual real life disco DJ. A
s he understood sound he worked alongside
Colin and Jim
in the
lighting
box
and one night
taped Mike’s performance. The result became
a cameo slot in
his own night club act for many years afterwards, although it did not lead to change of career fo
r the man himself. In fact Mike was offered a return to the north of
England
by the Bank which he accepted.

The week was an unqualified success. I heard many staff talk about it in the City bars. We could have run it for weeks and still have sold every ticket every night. There were no stand out stars in that show but it was a triumph for the way that John Hebden directed it.

When you work for months on a show you have no idea how it is going to be received by the paying customers. Until the curtain goes up on opening night all the company are a bunch of nervous individuals, hoping that none of them will let the others down as soon as the opening bars are played and the lights go up.

Few actors like being the first on stage; you are alone, no back up, no chorus, just your talent. I can see Iris
Adele Paddock
now
,
walking out in front of the house curtain with the follow spot on her until she reached a small block of steps with a lectern and an open book.

As soon as
Iris as
Miss Lynch the Headmistress finishes her opening address the curtains opened, the lights came on, the juke box flashed into life, the music crashed into action and the cast blew the audience away. In the theatre you live for moments like that.

It was a long week but satisfying. We all knew we had achieved something quite remarkable.
Myself, I realised that this is what I really enjoyed. Not the spotlight, not the applause,
it was
the act of putting something together from nothing but a director’s imagination and then seeing it all become real. This is where my direction in theatre was to be. Or where I wanted it to be.

Performing in a show can be tiring especially if you have a full time day job which nearly all of the Theatre Club had by virtue of being in National Westminster Bank.

T
he
Theatre
Club’s President was Gordon Reeve
who was the Regional Director of
City Region
and a man whose word was obeyed. If any of the ladies of the chorus needed a note of explanation for their own manger for being slightly late in the mornings or needing to leave early for the performance then Gordon Reeve would sign one.

This didn’t seem to extend to senior members of staff like myself.

One of the really p
leasant things about the Sedgwick Centre
was that there was a pub directly opposite across a pedestrian crossing. As it was just within the boundaries of the City of
London
it opened at five o’clock. As I have mentioned these were the very bad days before the Licensing Act opened the way for all day drinking.

This is where we met before the show; cast, crew and anyone else. Although Alex Fraser had returned as Stage Manager Colin liked to pass any problems through me first. So he was often in the pub as well. It had the extra advantage in knowing if certain members of the cast had arrived.

The best thing about this pub was that it was a really good pub to go after the show. Being a friendly type house it also had a liberal view on hours so it was often well past twelve when we left.

I was living in Hertford which was a forty minute train journey from Kings Cross. I usually managed to catch the last tube train from Aldgate to Kings Cross and the h
alf past twelve train home. About this time
I discovered the most customer friendly service I have ever encountered from a rail company.

As long as I could get to Kings Cross and a train to
Alexandra
Palace
there was a train waiting to go to Hertford every hour. Before it left the station the guard would com
e along the carriages and ask ever
yone on the train where they wanted to get off.
He passed this information on to the driver who stopped the train where hi
s passengers had requested
. This service has of course now been discontinued and if you are
now
left slightly the worse for wear in the City you have to find a friend with a spare bed or a spare bed in an unfriendly station.

A week long show and an excess of alcohol puts a strain on the body. I was usually home at half past one in the morning and back in the City by eight later that morning and after a days work
,
back at the theatre. My staff began to mention that I was beginning to look a
little worse for wear, and a bit more frazzled around the edges
as the week wore on.

I said as much to Colin on the final night. His advice to me was to take a week’s leave and work his hours. That was the best piece of advice anyone had given me and changed my life.

I once read a book called ‘Zen and the Workplace’ or something like that.
Its
core advice was that if you were unhappy in your job it was not you at fault,
or your employer, or the job, or the rules
. What was required was that you find a job where you
understood the rules and could
work with them.

When my Aunt Maud died I asked for her drinks tray. It was produced by Gilbeys, the gin people. My mother and Maud both worked for them post war
in their
Park Road
,
Camden
Town distillery. I put
my love of gin
down
to this simple fact.

This drinks tray had a design and words of wisdom for every sign of the zodiac. For Libra it began: ‘The morning is not your best period. Your first drink of the day is most probably an Alka Seltzer’.
How true.

Whilst rehearsals were continuing with Grease we were planning the next show. We knew that funds would be limited owing to the expense involved in Grease. Being responsible Banker
s we did not seek to rely on
income from four nights of full houses to balance the books. Whatever the outcome we would still be over budget
for
Grease and funding would
have to
be pulled back
on the next show.

At this time there had also been a growth in new members and something of a revolution was stirring. It was drawn to the committee’s attention that the name of the club included the word ‘theatre’ but there were limited opportunities for non-musical actors to play a part.

The demand grew for
a few
more dr
amas
as well as
musicals.

Once again serendipity raised its beautiful head. John Hebden suggested we stage Harleq
uinade. N
o one had ever heard of it although a few of us were aware of the playwright Terence Rattigan. A lot of companies do shy away from this as it is rooted in post war
Britain
and
is about
the lives of a touring theatre company putting on classic play
s or the works of Shakespeare
. It also has r
eferences to now defunct Council for the Encouragement of Music and Arts (CEMA)
.

I was a little surprised to find that the Club had actually performed Harlequinade in 1959 and The Browning Version in 1970 but never as a double bill.

Harlequinade is a farce. It relies on a group of believable people being caught up in an unbelievable situation. The more intense their inability to deal with spirallin
g disaster the funnier the farce becomes. Clive Dunn once spoke about the cast of Dad’s Army as being a group of good
character
acto
rs caught up in funny situations.
This is the simple philosophy behind situation comedy which seems to escape many writers in the genre.