KIDDERMINSTER PLAYHOUSE
1946 - 1968 A Souvenir
| History | Contents | Previous Page | Next Page |
DEADLINE 1951-1952
Interest centred, of course, on the approach of the fifth anniversary and the challenge to clear the debt. The head lines kept the figures before the public, a monster bazaar in the Town Hall carried many hopes, the cheques continued to come in and the chairman of the society started murmurs about foul play with a gift of 100 guineas.As it turned out the gesture was not necessary, for the bazaar brought in £250 and Sir Barry Jackson, returning to the theatre for the anniversary performance of The Mask and the Face was able to congratulate the Society on raising nearly £20,000 in five years. He confessed that he had been none too optimistic about the success of the venture.
Ruth Dalley returned to speak another prologue which looked ahead to
the day when television would have gone the way
| Of Pepper's Ghost and What the Butler Saw, |
| When talking films have joined the dinosaur. |
| When atom bombs have knocked each Playhouse flat |
| And science has no more to marvel at. |
No-one believed then that a bulldozer could so easily - and with so little protest - take over from the bomb.
The season had opened with Murder at the Vicarage and the Nonentities continued with Queen Elizabeth Slept Here, Treasure Hunt (leads for Leonard Bridges and Rosemary Batt), and Laburnum Grove, which saw the first appearance of Jack Holloway, now a BBC announcer and Ralph Bellamy of The Archers.
Rep continued in 1951 with See How They Run, Goodness How Sad, Playbill, Young, Wives' Tale, Home at Seven, Charley's Aunt (with William Moore at his best as Fancourt Babberley), Before the Party, Don't Listen Ladies, Lace on Her Petticoat, .Castle in the Air (with Jessie Matthews as guest artist), and Dandy Dick, a roaring farce with Reginald Green and Madeline Newbury leading the fun.
Kenneth Rose's new play, Forsaking All Other, had William Moore
and Marion Corbet-Perrin as William III and Queen Mary and Keith Andrews
as the Duke of Marlborough.
The 1952 rep opened with many new faces and those "also taking part"
in the opening production The Happy Family included the unknown
name of John Osborne.
Osborne went on to play leads in productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Of Mice and Men, Arms and the Man and The Seventh Veil. And every night after the performance he was to be found in his dressing room with his typewriter until the theatre closed. The English theatre was to know his name in another four years.
Other productions included Larger Than Life, Return to Tyassi, The Private Secretary, The Holly and the Ivy and The Damask Cheek. They introduced, among others, Brenda Kaye, Brenda Vernon, Paul Anstee, Eleanor Greet, Esme Easterbrook, Anthony Creighton and Barbara Keogh.
The Young Vic was, alas, no more and its place was taken by a self-styled younger brother, the Northern Children's Theatre, which brought a bright little show, Smugglers' Bay. Other tours included Daddy Long Legs, with Philip Barrett, A Guardsman's Cup of Tea; Worm's Eye View again, Claudia, The Dish Ran Away, with Chili Bouchier, My Wife's Lodger and Love in Idleness.
The Imperial Opera Company was back, so were the Sherry Brothers and the Pavinoff Ballet, Charmian Innes was here in revue, Cilli Wang, with her unique act, was pioneering the one-man show which has now become so popular and Bert Maurice was producer and dame for the pantomime, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The KAOS show was Katinka and Carpet Trades chose Gipsy Love. The joint societies production was another lavish presentation, Song of the South, which had Edward Hutchinson and Norah Bennett in the leads and a splendid piece of stage mechanics involving blowing up a train as it crossed a bridge.
Finance
Takings were down to an average of £345 for the 50 weeks, the Nonentities made £1,357, the Playhouse lost £l,871 and, worst of all, the debt, which had been eliminated in November, was back up to £3,460 when the books were made up in June.The reason lay in the falling receipts as television became more and more a household fixture. The Nonentities, working with amateur labour, took it for granted that their own shows would have to subsidise losses on professional work but, failing adequate subsidy - and grants were still only £628 - there had to be a limit below which losses could not be allowed to fall.
Another round in the rating fight was lost when an appeal to a Lands
Tribunal was dismissed, with costs against the society.