Notes from the Stage Manager's Box (5 page)

These were the early days before wi-fi so there was a link to the lighting box and the MD had earphones but not much you could do about the cast, unfortunately!

The final scene of Call Me Madam takes place in the Ambassador’s palace where a grand ball is being held. It takes a bit of time for the stage crew to set this up as it requires several flats, a new backdrop and plenty of furniture such as chaise-longues and chairs.

A good playwright will understand this and write a scene to allow the next scene to be put in place. In our case there was a musical number sung by members of the male chorus in front of the house curtain. There isn’t much room between this and the orchestra pit but enough for three men to move about without too much complication.

This trio of singing diplomats consisted of Roy Follett, Goff Miles and Frank Needham. What they lacked in singing ability they made up for in enthusiasm. They also looked the part. They were all seni
or managers in the Bank so were well used to wearing
dinner suits, black ties and
top hats.

Whilst they sang their number the stage crew had to set the next scene. This had already been done five times during the week so we had it almost to p
erfection. But with a full crew!
Paul and myself looked around and panic set in. Art Garfunkel and Bill Oddie were nowhere to be seen.

We tried as best we could to push, drag and encourage some furniture on stage and secure the flats but two men can’t always cover the work of four. By now Trevor Gash in the SM’s box was going a bright shade of pink! There is not much you can do once certain things have been put in motion. Everyone has their
cues and they are often set in motion
by certain other things that are going on.

As the singing ends and fades to the intro for the next number the three men in front of the curtains move slowly backwards. The job of drawing back the curtains was handed to some poor chap who was situated somewhere up in the roof which he accessed by a ladder on the side of the stage. His cue to open the curtains was when the music stopped
and a new chord struck
.

The MD was unaware of the panic backstage and although he might have struck up a reprise the three men on stage wouldn’t have known to carry on singing because there was no way we could tell them to.

The lad stuck in the roof
couldn’t see much of the action but he could hear the music stop and then start
,
so he pulled on the rope and the front of house curtains slowly moved apart. The three diplomats knew that as soon as the music changed they were to move backwards, without
turning around, trusting that the curtains would part.

Similarly the female chorus and other members of the male chorus saw the curtains open and started their entrance from either side of the flats which resembled the opening into the
Ambassadors
garden
.

At this moment Art Garfunkel and Bi
l
l Oddie appeared from the saloon bar of the pub next door and began to move furniture onto the stage. The three
singers, the background chorus, the stage crew all in black and the complete set of furniture all met in the middle and collapsed in a heap.

The stage crew bowed to the audience, the chorus rose and continued to sing and Trevor Gash stuffed whatever he co
uld into his mouth to stifle a string of abuse
that did not appear in the script. The audience laughed, it was one of the theatre
’
s funniest moments, bu
t not one that was written by Irving Berlin
.

The following year the Club performed Half A Sixpence at the
Westminster
but without me. I had suffered enough. There was certainly a post mortem and as I mentioned at the head of this chapter one thing to remember is that although working in the theatre can be enjoyable a certain amount of self discipline is an absolute requirement.

In 1981 the Club hosted the last Festival of One Act Plays. Despite my reservations about ever working in a theatre again Trevor persuaded me to be his Stage Manager for the one act play he was to direct.

This would have been in either March or April and the Club decided on an official entry as the National Westminster Theatre Club
back at the
Golden
Lane
Theatre
. Trevor
Had settled on Gosforth’s Fete as the play
and assembled the cast
from the Club’s membership
.

Gosforth’s Fete
was written by Alan Ayckbourne and is set in a
typical English village. The action takes place in the organiser’s tent. The part of the fete organiser the p
ublican Gosforth
,
was played by Tony Siddall who with his wife was a stalwart of many of the Club’s productions. Looking over the programmes I think this must have been one of his last appearances before he was sent to
New York
on attachment to the National Westminster Bank Office there.

Ayckbourne was a master at taking very ordinary situations
in normal life
and develop
ing them into comedies of behaviour and manners
. The action begins as a mirror of every village fete you might have had the pleasant or otherwise experience of attending. Things start to go wrong, plans unwind and everything ends in chaos.

It was a novel experience for me to stand by the Stage Manager’s box and give the lighting and sound men their cues. They were simple enough so I
managed to
acquit myself well enough
without any problems arising.

There were
other duties attached
to this task, one technical,
one ve
ry simple but no less important and one purely for effect.

Part of the humour in the play is the exposure of some secrets best kept private that are broadcast accidentally by Gosforth over the village fete’s PA system
. They are spoken a
long with the usual announcements of lost children and where the next event is taking place. This could have been done very simply through the theatre’s own sound system but Trevor wanted
this to be as authentic as possible
.

We had a small budget for this show and Trevor entrusted me with much of the purchase of small props. This was well before the days of the internet so searching for just the right item was not so easy.

To digress just a little it must be remembered that a lot of the organisation by staff such as me who have committed themselves to a time consuming hobby has to be done during the course of
a working day. Most managers were
reasonably tolerant
if
the work was being done on behalf of the Bank in some form or other. In my case I spent
more than
a little time trying to organise a village fete
. Managers will accept that
as long as the work gets done and neither customers nor Bank loses any money as a result of your concentration or attention slipping.

If I was shopping around for props today it could be done at home on my own PC with the help of a good search engine. Back in 1981 all I had was a telephone and a stack of telephone directories very much the same way
in which
Sir Alan Sugar
sends out his apprentices. Although m
y manager indulged me and my col
leagues were fascinated
it didn’t sell
many more tickets.

Try as I might I could not find a large enough piece of red and white striped canvas that we could tie to a batten and fly in as a backdrop. We had to settle for
a
plain but deeply stained piece of khaki material. I did say to Trevor that a red and white canvas would look more like a circus tent and the cloth we had gave just that appearance of a village a little down on its luck and having to settle for what they could get. I think I won on points.

Most technical staff at theatres are more than happy to show off their skills when asked for something unusual. Anyone who has ever been to a village fete will know that the audio system is awful. It is either a few decibels above tolerant or raided from any one of the
UK
’s many main line railway stations.

To make something sound this awful in a theatre where audio excellence is prized is a bit of an insult to the technician.
After the purchase of the tent and hiring cups, saucers, fake food and a few other random things found in an
organiser’s
tent we had some of the budget left over.

I was sent back to the telephone directories to locate a little black box that would distort pe
rfect sound to a
babble. What I obtained was a sound box that when attached to the microphone at one end and the theatre’s sound system at the other made the announcements sound as if they were bouncing around the
perimeter of the
field outside
,
and like a b
aseball home run finally end back where they started.

It was brilliant.

Having secured the technical angle there was just one last act to perform. About the middle of the performance a pompous lady councillor bursts into the tent having been drenched from head to foot in a surprise thunderstorm.

I had a large pail of water ready at the side of the stage and as instructed by the resident stage manager plenty of towels and paper to mop up any spillages. All I had to do when the councillor was about to make her entrance was to throw the bucket of water over her.

To be fair Marianne Stephens was not too keen on this. Who would? Anyway she stood there with eyes closed and I tipped the water over her. The problem was that she was wearing a suitable floral type dress
but made of a waterproof fabric. N
o matter how much liquid I threw over her it just shook it off like a dog jumping out of a stream.
However her head, hair and hat were soaked and that had to be good enough.

Unfortunately our production was not quite good enough to win the first prize. We came seventh out of twenty. It was credible but no one had any misgivings about our performance. It was a good introduction for me anyway to back stage work.

(
The
Golden
Lane
Theatre
, Barbican,
London
)

The following spring the Club returned to the Westminster Theatre with Half a Sixpence but without me.

I had no idea of the reasoning behind the decision
whether it was because of another staging disaster or rising costs. Whatever the reason the Club decided that the next production in November1981 would be at the
Golden
Lane
Theatre
. We had always been welcome there during the Festival of One Act Plays and
it became our ‘home’ until 1985
.

The
Golden
Lane
Theatre
was situated in the Barbican area of the City of
London
.
The Barbican Theatre is close by.
You can see one of the high rise
apartment blocks
with an equally high payable rent in the top left of the photograph above.