Life on the Stage

THE WIZARD OF OZ

Peter Hopkins (LGS Staff 1960-1997) was in touch in the summer months to share some treats he had found in a reorganisation of his records. He wrote:

‘I have at last started to work through my collection of photographs. In a folder of informal pictures of individual people, I have come across six which I took in 1981 at the dress rehearsal of The Wizard of Oz, which was that year’s musical… The girl in the experimental sepia photo was in the chorus on stage. The others are a double-bass player (in profile) relaxing and watching the action on stage, two violinists and a cellist’.

He suggested, quite rightly, that they might be of interest to others – and that others might be able to identify those in them as he has no record of their names. Do you recognise anyone?

A quick rummage on the digital archive led me to a photo of those in ‘the main parts’ and a fabulously detailed review from a Mr Woolgar who apparently assisted with drama that Easter Term and was a very experienced professional, having been Artistic Director and Producer at the Derby Playhouse.

Can you help contribute to our collective history of this production?

Besides Peter finding these exactly 40 years after the production was staged, a further coincidence was that they arrived just as Fairfield were rehearsing their Year 6 production of The Wizard of Oz ready for an online recorded performance (COVID-19 yet again putting a spanner in the works and denying a live showing).

And I know that this is a show that must have been staged many times before here on campus – a 1996 production popped up when looking back to 25 years ago, for instance.

Do you have memories of school theatre productions? Whether you were involved in them or just happen to have kept hold of a programme or poster from one, we would invite you to contribute your recollections or artefacts to our archives. Do get in touch if you have anything to share.

HALCYON DAYS

Adam Richards (Class of 1980) got in touch to send his apologies for not being able to attend the Decades Reunion this November – a trip from California is just fraught with too many difficulties at this time. Prompted by some words of John Weitzel’s, he also shared some memories of shows and life in school theatre productions back then. I asked him to tell us more, and together with his friend Peter Culver (Class of 1980) they have done just that.

‘Drama was an important part of our school experience in the years that we were at LGS’, Peter Culver and Adam Richards write.

Unlike today’s dedicated department and purpose-built facilities, it was extracurricular for both pupils and staff and centred exclusively on the Hodson Hall. The proscenium stage suffered from a serious lack of space offstage for scenery or actors. It was said that when it was being built there was a fly-tower included in the design but that the then Headmaster Mr Walter did not approve of “boys flying”. So, as a result, most productions had limited sets or had to alternate between scenes in front of the curtain and behind it with lots of “noises off”.

Our own experience started with the First Form Play - which in 1973 ended with a full Trial by Jury in which Philip Reed’s (as Judge) cry of “throw your briefs upon the shelf” was greeted with a hail of underwear. We were both hooked. Adam joined the light crew under Mr Thomas in time for Pirates while Peter initially joined the sound crew under Mr Lane and then crossed over to lights.

At that point, the lights were controlled from a small concrete box backstage, Stage Right, that was reached by a ten rung vertical ladder just over the desk where the Stage Manager sat. The 12 channels were all mechanical rheostats, with a grand master fader that worked by locking the individual channels together and then winding a handle

furiously. Given the heat from the resistance dimmers and the need for several people to physically operate more complex changes, it was a true sweatbox and so, when not working, boys would literally hang out of the box, gasping for cooling air.

In terms of lighting effects, sophistication was absent, so invention was the order of the day. For example, when we needed the City of Worms to burn in Luther, Mr Thomas devised a box shape covered with strips of layers of coloured “gels” that when hit with a timber 2x4 “sensitively”, as he would implore us, would project the changing colours of flames across the set.

Each year the combined schools put on a Gilbert and Sullivan, a mid-school play and then for the third term there would be a staff play or musical. It was from this last item that the scale of the productions we attempted and especially the lighting changed to be much more ambitious.

The staff production of Joseph was that game changer. In that school year of 1976-77 The Mikado had followed She Stoops to Conquer so two solid winners were already in the bank. Our Joseph was the first fully staged amateur production outside a school where Rice and Lloyd-Webber both taught. The School even received a telegram from (now) Baron Lloyd-Webber wishing us luck on opening night. The biggest changes it wrought were because it was too big to fit the traditional stage. There had always been some additional staging that could be placed “out front” which would compete for space with the LGS orchestra during Gilbert and Sullivan, but the cast of 40 or more students in the chorus was on stage at all times and so necessitated a much bigger stage. In turn, this required the lighting to expand way beyond the traditional six spotlights, three washes and two specials. Lighting control was completely inadequate and so new “solid state” control equipment was brought, together with temporary lighting towers and lighting pipes which hung precariously using clamps gripped onto the roof trusses, right over the audience’s heads.

As Mr Thomas related in the Loughburian later that year, ‘...If the cast acted fearlessly, and the front rows of the audience showed no signs of nervousness, it may be that they were oblivious to the fact that the equipment dangling over their heads weighed one-third of a tonne.’

Especially for Joseph, ten colour change wheels that rotated in front of spotlights were rented “...red and green and yellow and pink and azure and mauve...” The darker colours would quickly burnout and rain strange smelling plastic onto the audience and cast.

The most memorable performance in the show for both of us looking back now was the song Those Canaan Days performed by beret-wearing, garlic-bedecked, gauloisesmoking, accordion-playing, moustachioed members of staff (many from the Modern Languages department) using outrageous cod French accents. With all this talent in a solid cast and Mr Campbell’s glorious band overcoming the lacklustre props, the success of the breakout musical that still “works” 40 years later was also ensured by cleverly including so many students into the production thereby ensuring a large audience. Joseph became a smash hit. The usual one-week run became two and then, due to conflicts with other uses for the Hall, after a pause it transferred to the Loughborough Town Hall for a limited run for charity.

Buoyed with this success, the lighting team was liberated from the sweatbox for good and set up shop in the “projection booth/kitchen” used for film club at the back of the auditorium - formerly the exclusive domain of Mr Lane and sound crew. Setting up lights for a show was a bit of a challenge because the ladder used had a habit of collapsing. This led, on one occasion, to our arriving to find the hall caretaker clinging grimly to a light pipe 30ft up! After that, a rented scaffolding tower was used.

Larger productions continued under the watchful gaze of Mr Weitzel as Stage Manager cueing the action via lights from Stage Right, and broke away from the Gilbert and Sullivan canon (there had been a Utopia Limited but not quite The Grand Duke) to put on La Belle Hélène and then came Die Fledermaus in 1980 As the student thespian acme of our time at LES, the Die F. “tour” to Buxton Opera House does stand out for us - mainly because we had to bring all our own equipment in vans into the space which was still equipped with lights and dimmers that were pre-war in nature. There’s nothing quite like rigging a 40lb light fixture 15ft up a ladder with no safety harness in the “Gods” itself, 60ft up from the stalls! This would never be allowed nowadays for men or boys. Once finished rigging, we both got to observe Henry Moss’ pantomime as a drunken jailor à la Buster Keaton, which never ceased to stop the show.

John Weitzel may recall that on one occasion Adam single-handedly destroyed the scenery on stage by trying to move a set of unused “flats” backstage which, overcoming his feeble strength, proceeded to domino-like “flatten” the entire set one earth-shattering piece at a time. While being questioned by Mr W as to how this could possibly have occurred, he very nearly recreated the “feat” - in something like a Jacques Tati gag. The great thing is that rather than being punished, he remembers he was simply thanked for his honesty, laughed at for his stupidity and repairs were made. It was truly a backstage theatrical “family”, in fact.

Our time on crew ended with the Advanced 6th review in 1980 whose “hit” was Mr Lane as a ventriloquist’s dummy cracking wise about the supposedly “hidden” new gymnasium. Overall, drama was a wonderfully broadening experience for both those on stage and off and we breezed through what was often a grim 1970s outside the school gates with élan. Together we had built up the productions to a standard that often rivalled professional theatres by a “can do” spirit and lots of very hard work. Halcyon days, ‘..do suy remember soz days in Canaan?’, indeed.

Exciting Developments

The reordering of the LHS Archive presented the opportunity to bring together all the information and materials we have on the Carol Service and tableaux.

I think everyone is aware that the Carol Service with tableaux is a long held tradition at the School and for many it forms one of their most enduring memories from their school days. Something of an urban myth had evolved that the very first Carol Service with tableaux was presented in 1920 - it was believed that Miss Bristol began the tradition and as she started her term as Headmistress in 1920, that date has become associated with the origins of the event. This would have made 2020 the centenary year of Tableaux.

However, a team of three set out to prove (or disprove) this date once and for all over the summer as more and more treasures were uncovered in the archive. We could find no evidence to suggest the Carol Service with its famous tableaux started in 1920 but through cross referencing a number of different sources there is sizeable evidence that it did begin life in 1925.

We feel that this discovery is something of a blessing. It means the 100th year has not been and gone, hampered by pandemics and restrictions and preventing a live audience from witnessing the spectacle. And it does give us plenty of time to plan for a fitting celebration.

A project to catalogue the evolution of the works of art used as tableaux over the years was completed this summer, although there are still gaps where we don’t have records. We are keen to fill these gaps and generally collect as much information, photographs and memories of Tableaux as we can over the next few years. Please get in touch if you have anything to share.

By Olivia Smith, Development Office o.smith@lsf.org

LGS Poets

By John Weitzel, LGS Archivist

EDWARD MCCURDY

In last year’s Beyond the Barrier, I wrote about Charles McCurdy both as one of our three MPs but more in connection with his donations to the School’s library. This time I want to start by concentrating on his little brother, Edward. They were both boys here in the 1880s, the sons of Rev. Alexander McCurdy, the Primitive Methodist Minister for Loughborough when the Church was in Swan Street. They were living at 3 Burton Street so the School could not have been more convenient! At the time there were 117 boys in the School – 77 day boys and 40 boarders. Both boys were bright and we know from the Cambridge University Local Examinations that, in the Juniors, Edward achieved a 1st Class certificate. Out of 4844 entries he was top in drawing, 74th in maths and 132nd in Latin. In the Seniors, Charles achieved a 2nd Class certificate coming 31st in Latin out of the 660 entries. On leaving School, Charles went to Cambridge and Edward to Oxford where he showed his natural literary talent and wrote poems, serious and light.

His first book Roses of Paestum was published in 1900 but above all he became an authority on the works and personality of Leonardo da Vinci, being the first person to translate his diaries out of their original mediaeval Italian mirror letter writing. In recognition of this, he was made a member of the Athenæum Club where the Loughburians held their London Dinner in 2019. His first work on Leonardo de Vinci was published in 1904, followed in 1906 by a version of the Notebooks of Leonardo and in 1907 by The Thoughts of Leonardo. His major work was the issue of a two-volume edition of the notebooks in 1938 which was then re-issued in 1948 and so far has run into 126 editions, the last in 2017. In the midst of this, he did write an acclaimed biography of Raphael Santi published in 1917.

In 1906 he married Sylvia Stebbing, the daughter of the Assistant Editor and First Leader Writer for The Times. She was a bookbinder who had trained Virginia Woolf in the skill as a therapeutic activity when she was not writing. On their marriage, she gave up her craft to concentrate on family life in Ashstead, Surrey raising their six children.

His first book of poetry The Lays of Limpet published in 1920 had an unusual content. ‘I may say that the verses, the fruit of experience of three years’ service in the Ministry of Pensions, are concerned mainly – perhaps more that proportionately – with the incidents of the daily work and the ways and doings of officials. And yet the desire was, above all, to pay a tribute to the great protagonist in the drams, the tragic figure in the background, disabled soldier or sailor, to whose needs all the others are engaged in ministering – however diversely.’ One poem that does not do this is the first To Alec, his first son born in 1914. A further book, simply called Poems, followed in 1925.

Unlike Charles, Edward kept in close contact with the School. In the May 1888 edition of The Loughburian he won a 5s (25p!) prize offered by the OL Association with a poem called The Seagull. He probably reflected later that entering was a big mistake as by that November he was Editor of the magazine (which in those days was produced by the OL Association) – a post he was to hold for several years - and by 1927 was Chairman of the Association.

CLIFFORD DYMENT: AN ILL-BEHAVED SHIRKER

Two years before that in September 1925, the son of a war widow entered the School. Cliff ord Dyment was born on 20 January 1914 to Welsh parents living in Monmouthshire but was actually born in Alfreton, Derbyshire, where his aunt to be was a hospital matron. As he writes in his autobiography, The Railway Game, ‘My father was very fussy about his pretty young wife and wouldn’t trust anybody but his sister to bring his first born into the world. And so it came about that I was taken to Alfreton in my mother’s womb and taken from it in a rush basket.’ In later life he was so ashamed of not being born in Wales that in his autobiography he writes, ‘I was born in two places. One, actual and off icial…The other, adoptive and private, has never been put down anywhere until now except in the Prefect Biographical Note which I used to draft in my rough book at Loughborough Grammar School.’!!

Four years later his father, William, was killed on 22May 1918 at the Somme whilst serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers. Seeking work as a sickness visitor, his mother took Cliff ord and his sister to Loughborough and he joined Rosebery Street School before joining LGS. He did not have a happy childhood as his mother’s work meant that they were left for hours every day to their own devices or the indiff erent care of strangers. He spent a period with an aunt and uncle who treated him harshly. All this led to a series of illnesses through sheer neglect. He had chronic ear discharge and only partial hearing in one of his ears.

None of this was known by the staff at the School where his education was being paid for out of a fund for the children of men who had died in the war. He was in the middle or towards the bottom of his form. Comments on his record card reflect this. ‘Moderate progress’ ‘good but could do better’ ‘Slow but gradually improving in Latin. English and Maths weak.’ ‘Mostly fair. poor Latin: an ill-behaved shirker’ ‘Rather Lazy’ Might be keener in and out of School’ ‘Weak in Maths and Chemistry. Not strong’. He left the School at Christmas 1929 just before his 16th birthday whilst repeating the year in LVb, having become bottom the term before, with no School Certificate, and went to work in a bicycle shop. He moved from one badly paid job to another and for a time was on the dole. He was a commercial traveller for a while and an assistant in a Montague Burton outfitters.

It is likely, however, that repeating the year for just a term was to be the inspiration for his later life. At the end of that term, he was fift h and the comment was ‘Good, especially in English’ and this is the only clue as to why, when he was 20, The Listener published one of his poems and he was launched on a literary career. One of his first poems The Son was to become one of his most famous. It is not uncommon to read poems about the First World War written from the perspective of fathers, mothers, sister or sweethearts of men who had left to fight, but there are only two poems written by sons of soldiers. One was Ted Hughes’ Six Young Men written 40 years aft er the war ended, the other was The Son written in 1935.

The same year, 1935, his first published collection First Day

The Son

I found the letter in a cardboard box, Unfamous history. I read the words. The ink was frail and brown, the paper dry After so many years of being kept. The letter was a soldier’s, from the front-Conveyed his love and disappointed hope Of getting leave. It’s cancelled now, he wrote. My luck is at the bottom of the sea.

Outside the sun was hot; the world looked bright; I heard a radio, and someone laughed. I did not sing, or laugh, or love the sun, Within the quiet room I thought of him, My father killed, and all the other men, Whose luck was at the bottom of the sea.

contains an acknowledgement that his thanks were due to the editors of The Listener, London Mercury, Bookman, Poetry (Chicago), Time and Tide and The Year’s Poetry for printing his poems. During World War II he was engaged to make films, working with the British government.

However it was his early childhood in Caerlon-on-Usk that was to be his greatest asset. He regarded himself as a Welshman and Dylan Thomas, who was the same age as him, befriended him with their common Welshness proving a strong bond. He arranged for Cliff ord to write the words for one of the films on life in the British Isles made by the BBC Film Television Unit as a contribution to the Festival of Britain. He repaid Dylan by letting him sleep at his flat when Dylan was too drunk to go home! But, on the whole, Cliff ord did not get on well with his fellow poets. They frightened him and, an odd man out among men, he felt an odd poet out among poets.

Just before he died in 1971, his collected poems were published with one poem ‘As a boy with a richness of needs I wandered’ included by Philip Larkin in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 1973 his friend Robert Greacen, a literary critic, visited the School on the 20January, Cliff ord’s birthday, and gave a selection of readings in School Assembly. This tradition was to continue for the next few years with Wilf Massiah, the School’s librarian, choosing appropriate pieces so the ‘ill behavedshirker’ was not forgotten!

CORRECTION NOTICE

We hereby issue a full retraction of an email sent to alumni, between 2009 and 2012, advising of the death of David Saul (Class of 1962). During this period, the Development Off ice received notification of David’s death and this information was subsequently disseminated to our alumni community. We are please to confirm that David is alive and well and living in the Philippines. David has recently reconnected with some of his school friends and can be contacted directly through Loughburians Live.