Notes from the Stage Manager's Box (11 page)

John Hebden did not let us down. As soon as the front curtains opened and we saw the set, we knew that we had to have it.

At the end of the performance we met Jonathan in the bar and said we wanted to hire the set. No problem, it was free for hire in November. However, owing to the complexity of the steel framework we would also have to hire his own technical crew for the weekend
s
either side of the show’s run and their overnight accommodation and travel expenses.

We had another drink.
The cost was at least four figures which in 1985 was a lot of money for an amateur company. We still had theatre hire fees, musician’s fees, costume hire and all other costs. And an extra cos
t for Greased Lighting, the car which was the property of the Detroit Clothing Company and was displayed in their
Bond Street
window. We had to make separate arrangements to get this delivered as well.

We took another look at the set, had another drink and agreed the fee subject to the full approval of the committee.

What Jonathan also omitted to mention was that it would require at least four of us to help shift the set from storage in
Cambridge
down to
London
and we would have to help cover the hire of a suitable vehicle. Small charges kept coming in.
Roy
tried to keep the shocks and surprises as minimal as possible when reporting to the committee and Frank in particular.

As it transpired the cost of the Cambridge Arts own crew was eventually reduced to one day’s work owing in no short measure to the hard graft of our own members.

This increase and saving in
the budget was a constant run of crisis
talks
between Roy, myself and Jonathan who
also
had a
n office in
London
. It was situated
in
Finsbury Square
,
a h
uge red brick fronted
Victorian
building
with corridors on every level off of which were a rabbit warren of small
er
offices. All of them with desk, phone, telex machine and filing cabinet. It was a bust
ling hive of Dickensian proportions
.

We had a fall back position. Any overspend on Grease would have to be recovered from the next production which had not yet been decided. We needed to experience the benefits or otherwise of using the Chaucer
first
.

T
he Chaucer Thea
tre
wasn’t really a theatre in the thespian sense. The building stood in the middle of Gardners Corner like a monolith in the film 2001, completely isolated from the rest of the
bustling wor
ld of investment and insurance
by the encircling traffic.

On the top floor was a well equipped bar which loo
ked out at the City. On the
floors below were badminton courts and squash courts with changing rooms, showers and probably a gym tucked away as well.

On the ground floor was the theatre. It was really a conference centre. That was what it was built for. It had rows of soft, red upholstered seating with arm rests and plenty of leg room. Every seat had an uninterrupted view of the stage. The auditorium was air conditioned and had a lighting scheme that could be dimmed, centred or arranged in any way that a conference organiser wished.

The stage was wide, deep and with plenty of room on both sides unlike the unequal wings of the
Golden Lane
. The Stage Manager’s box was properly wired and there were plenty of poles to fly in any number of backdrops. The lighting box was fully computerised.

It was a stage manager’s
heaven.

The resident Stage Manager was Colin Wootton
His own background was in theatre and he understood how to use the facilities of the Chaucer for our benefit. He was popular and fitted in. I am sure he was the first and only non Banking person to be made an honorary member of the Theatre Club.

By arrangement we
each
took a days leave and
drove
up
to
Cambridge
on the Friday before the ‘getting in’ day
on Saturday
to help move the set.
Normally it would have been a Sunday but the crew needed at least one extra day and we were paying for them.
Roy Follett and Peter Harris were in one car and I drove Jim North and myself. The four of us met in a village pub on the outskirts of
Cambridge
, recommended by the Good Beer guide.

It justified its entry. The pub was warming for a cold November lunch time, there was a
fire lit and not many customers. Two middle aged ladies were sitting at the bar. Within a few minutes of arriving
Roy
had engaged them in conversation and had them laughing before he rejoined the rest of us with a long awaited pint.

A word or two about Roy Follett. He was not a young man, possibly then forty, goi
ng on fifty; his clothes
always hung
around his body
in a slightly off centre sort of way.
His shirts were rarely pressed and his ties often had the stains of the previous evening’s pint.
He had a shock of white hair which had become expert in repelling the assault of brush and comb.

This does not sound like the womaniser chatting up two ladies in a village pub. I suppose what
Roy
had was abundant charm. Not the sickly, insinuating kind but the warm, friendly inoffensive kind that spread
s
a bit of happiness
around
.
He liked talking to people because he liked people; you couldn’t dislike Roy Follett even if on occasions such as this he could embarrass you.

After a pint or two we found the Cambridge Arts Theatre and were about to regret hiring the set. It was stored by the side of the theatre buil
ding in its own covered area. The main piece
was an immense
steel
gantry which was to hold the musicians. It was
about
forty foot long,
five foot wide and just as high. It was supported by two other similar pieces of metal and
this structure was to be hidden by being
covered in wooden boxes.

No wonder it needed the resident crew to assemble it if only for the reasons of safety.

Soon after we arrived the lorry appeared. The driver described his conveyance as a forty foot pantechnicon. I used this phrase in one of my novels because I was so impressed. My American editor asked me for a translation and I told her that it was a large van for transporting furniture. That’s the phrase she used instead.

The set was at the end of an alley that was just a little wider than the width of the lorry. The driver took one turn and reversed it down that alleyway. The word we called it was ‘respect’.

The steel
gantry
and the rest of the set was loaded and we were to meet it again at the Chaucer in the morning.

The best way of explaining this set is by this photograph. It shows the gantry and the musicians about twenty foot high up over the stage. The set is designed like a juke box you found in pubs of the 1950’s.  When required the juke box opened its doors
and we could drive in Greased L
ightning. To hide the steel structure were large cubes with images of comics of the period. It was just magnificent.

(The set of Grease with
juke box in the background)

Only four of us had seen the set at the Bloomsbury Theatre so the rest of the cast and crew had to guess at its structure by our references. They were expecting it to be something quite unusual.

Once again I managed a little piece of deception by non-disclosure. Our original Musical Director was an
Oxford
graduate and Head of Drama Musicians at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Owing to an internal promotion he was unable to continue after about a month in rehearsal.

His rehearsal pianist was Penny Collins who was one of his students as well as working for a branch of the Bank in the
West End
. We asked her to take over the role of MD with assistance from John Hebden and she really excelled.

However I was a bit reluctant to tell her about where the musicians were to be situated as she admitted in the course of
an earlier
conversation that she suffered from vertigo. I left it until almost the last moment to explain the nature of the set. There is something of the bulldog spirit about people in the Arts; she carried on regardless and overcame her fear. She
conducted the music and
played the keyboard along with a drummer and two guitarists who were also Guildhall students.

The Chaucer Theatre may have been recently constructed with many modern lighting and technical features but it did lack one piece of vital equipment. A hoist.

Colin had mentioned
this to me when we hired the theatre but as so often happens explained that everything would be all right on the night and in place by the time of the show; including a hoist. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

Most stage sets are quite light. I was not alone in remembering the problems we had in getting the newscaster out of the
Golden
Lane
Theatre
. The steel gantry for Grease was a bigger challenge. It was about twice the weight and longer.

I remember standing in the middle of Gardners Corner with the Cambridge Arts Theatre crew and a few of us Bank staff staring at this huge piece of steel wondering how we were going to get it into the theatre. Everything else had been lifted into the empty lift shaft and pushed and pulled onto the stage. The gantry would not go so easy.

Fortunately it was still early morning and Roy Follett made a call to Steve Twigger. The Rugby Se
conds were playing at home and the Bank’s club house
was
only
a few miles down the road in
South London
. About an hour later half a dozen Steve Twiggers arrived and made hauling that piece of steel up a thirty foot high
empty
lift shaft seem like
pushing a monkey up a stick
.

I sat down in the plush seating with Roy Follett and let the men we were paying erect the set. Jim North sat with Colin in the lighting box and tested the electrics. The two of them were happy as Larry for the rest of the week, re-designing the colour sequences around the juke box as more ideas came to them.

After such a wobbly start the rest of the day went well. The rugby players got to
play
the match, t
he Cambridge Arts Theatre Crew were able to go home, the stage was set
and we were all away by tea time. E
verything
was
ready for the official getting-in.

As expected as soon as the cast walked in to the theatre area and on to the stage the reaction was one of ‘wow!’.

Roy and myself had installed ourselves as ever in the front seats to take notes on whatever else had to be obtained or paid for. I remember John Hebden walking on stage, looking around and coming centre to face the two of us. All he said was ‘thanks’. A very simple word that often escapes a lot of people. It meant a lot.