Notes from the Stage Manager's Box (13 page)

This farce would have been ideal for John as he had a sense of humour, a lightness of touch and an ability to interpret the script in a way that best suited the company.

It is usual
ly performed as a double bill
with The Browning Version which a better known Rattigan play. It tells the story of a minor public school headmaster seeking the approval of a pupil to justify his life and career as he approaches retirement. It is a touching play of emotion, respect and humility.

It would have been interesting to see how John would have approached this but it was not to be. As part of swingeing cuts to social service
s and public spending
being imposed by central Government (which shows that nothing
has
really changed from 1986 to 2012)
Islington Council dropped the grant for John’s therap
y work. He was temporarily unemployed
and
then
joined IMG, the sports publicity company. The work meant he had little time at the present for his outside interests and we had to find a new director.

I knew Ken Wirdnam from the One Act Play Festivals. He was a traditionalist in terms of following the script as it was presented with every stage direction and line. There is nothing wrong with this as playwrights at the peak of their craft such as Rattigan need people like Ken to interpret
their writing
as they themselves have perceived it
will appear
in pe
r
formance
.

Even
now
and with the benefit of hindsight I think it might have been a better mix for Ken to have directed The Browning Version as he did a very good job with it and for John to somehow been able to direct Harlequinade. But it could not happen that way and Ken directed both.

Ken had his own contacts and hired the sets for both plays himself. They were quite simple;
The Browning Version needs a wallpapered
study with French windows and a door and Harlequinade required very little more than backdrops and curtains. It was left to Roy and me to hire the props.

We had gotten quite used to this and to be honest quite looked forward to our trip to south
London
. We had both taken
leave
from work for a day
and travelled down to the Old Times Fur
nishing Company in Putney and set
off around the warehouse.

It was a work of pleasure. It was as if you had all the money you required to furnish your dream study. On the hire sheet went the leather in-laid desk, writing bureau, bookcases with rows of cardboard imitation classics, leather swivel chairs and strong wooden ones, hat stands and filing cabinets and a host of ash trays and writing materials. It was the only real expense for that play and on stage it did look every inch the study of a minor public school headmaster.

We repaired to our adopted local hostelry by the river. As I have mentioned
Roy
was no Cary Grant but he had that
innocent
schoolboy
’s
love of life and its minor eccentricities.

I can’t remember the name of the pub but it had a large bar with lots of tables and chairs overlooking the river. We had just got a pint and
Roy
went to the gents. A few minutes later he re-appeared and shouted at me a full twenty feet or more from the door: ‘Hey John, they’ve got orange flavoured condoms in the gents.’

I really don’t know who was more embarrassed; me, the other drinkers or the bar staff. It didn’t matter, some hid in their glass and some just smiled at this very strange Englishman.

Some two or three pints later a couple of attractive young women walked in and looked around for a free table.
Roy
did n
o more than stand up and offer
them ours. A few minutes later he was in animated conversation with them. They never
appeared
insulted or outraged. They just smiled politely and went on to enjoy their drinks whilst Roy and
I
returned to our former place at the bar and no more was said about it.

I had taken Colin’s advice and taken a week’s leave for the full run of the show. It did change the way I looked at employment for ever. The day started at two o’clock
in the afternoon
and involved setting the stage for the first scene, clearing the wings and doing any minor repairs to set and props.

Lunch as it would have been, was at five o’clock when the pub across the road opened. A liquid lunch and back to the theatre to check in cast and crew. Then the show
;
and dinner was a few more pints and a curry at the Peoples Friend.

There were two these in the City. They had plain tables and chairs, plain white hard plastic plates
(
most with a Swiss red
cross symbol painted on the rim
s)
and no alcohol license but the food was absolutely fabulous. It was cheap, hot, served with a smile and the restaurants were always busy; a good sign.

The
n
after a quick meal, find a way to Kings Cross and get home
. With no work the next morning
I could sleep later, have
a decent breakfast and feel refreshed
to get the train in for the next two o’clock start.

I realised then that I was not a morning person; I enjoyed the late nights. I worked better, I felt more alive and in a better frame of mind the next day. Even now I am happier working in the early hours of the morning.
In fact the lack of a routine or set working day such as we call the ‘nine to five’ was to me the intellectual and working freedom for which I had been seeking. The daily life of the average City worker did not fit easy into this open ended scheme of things.

By now I had been at Smiths Office,
1 Princes Street
for about three years after leaving
Cheapside
. During
this time I got a month
attachment to City Region Administration. I quite enjoyed this and it is a way for senior managers to look at the performance of staff with a view to their further promotion. So it was quite important to impress.

At the end of the
month I was called in to see the senior Manager and received a bucket of cold water over my head. I had done nothing wrong, I had achieved a high measure of approval from my superiors but he then suggested that if I wanted to further my career then I should look outside of the City. He went on to emphasise this
by stating the obvious; that
the staf
f I had been working with
were a few years younger
than me
and
a few more steps up the
slippery
ladder
of promotion
than I was.

Of course he was right but a few weeks later the Bank announced the closure of two prestigious City Offices.
The Bank had already began a process of removing
senior staff by offering early retirement if you were able to afford the extra years
contributions
on your pension payments.

What had happened to me was that someone had writ the message large on a very big wall. This was the future of the Bank and years later I heard of more large Office closures which meant fewer staff required and on looking in at branches of the Bank, there were few elder members of staff
working in them
. One staff member told me, ‘they got rid of the over fifties, now they’re working on the over forties’ This cull continued and not many more years later National Wes
tminster Bank plc was acquired
by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In short, the time had come to move on to a form of employment where the work and hours suited my temperament and abilities better. Which is what I did but not for another year.

Rehearsals for the double bill continued. Tony Siddall was back in the UK having played the nerd Eugene in Grease and now played the lead role of Andrew Crocker-Harris; Peter Davis the supporting role of John Taplow.

We were all quite pleased with the set for The Browning Version. Harlequinade posed a small problem. It is about a small touring company who are to perform Romeo and Juliet.
This tragedy as we all know requires a balcony.

Colin Wootton
and the stage crew
had constructed a balcony at stage left.
I’m not sure that it was used for anyone to stand on such as Juliet
,
as the play within the play never got that far, but it had to be solid.

We stood around looking at our efforts and no one was sure it was safe in its current form. There is only one way to test such things and it fell to the director Ken Wirdnam to be that man. He jumped up, swung from the pole supporting the balcony itself and the whole contraption clattered to the floor on top of him.

(The infamous balcony with a rare photo of Roy Follett and Mike Giddings – the one with glasses and clipboard)

For Colin and
me
it was back to the drawing board the next afternoon.

We were quite happy with the new version and as we stood at the bar awaiting other early arrivals discussed a new project. I offer the following to anyone who wants to stage Harlequinade and will promise not to grab any undeserved credit if it proves a success.

I must go back a few years to a time when I was going out with Lesley. We went to see
a show called Pump Boys and Dinettes which was set in an American diner with a filling station alongside. It was quite an enjoyable show but the thing that interested us t
hat when you went in the auditorium
to get to your seat the house curtains were already open and members of the cast were in costume drinking coffee in the diner’s bar.

This seemed quite revolutionary. About five minutes before ‘curtain up’ the lights were dimmed
, the cast returned backstage,
the house curtains drawn and the place looked
like a
normal
theatre
.

It gave Colin and I an idea. We decided that if we got the chance to take part in a One Act Play Festival we would stage Harlequinade. The stage crew would be on stage
just sitting around idle when
the audience walked in. They would remain on stage and in
full
view in their black outfits building the sets and thus become part of the action. We would also give one or two a few lines to add some depth; after all the play was about a theatre company and the strains and disputes between the various elements o
f the cast and crew.
John Hebden had picked the right show for us.

Colin and I never got the chance to bring this project to a stage. I left the Ban
k and Colin eventually moved
back to the real t
heatre. A
result I would imagine of the new owners of the Sedgwick Centre wanting to use the Chaucer
Theatre as a conference centre for which
it was
originally
intended and not as a home for amateur theatre companies.

I last saw Colin in
1987. I had left the Bank. I took
Chris my then girlfriend
and future wife
to see the Club’s November production of Guys and Dolls. I was chatting to Colin after the show and he was still in shock after being involved in the Kings Cross station fire of 18
th
November. The fire killed 31 people.