KIDDERMINSTER PLAYHOUSE
1946 - 1968 A Souvenir

History

Contents

THE DEMOLITION MEN 1964 - 1965

First news of the intention to re-route the ring road and demolish the Playhouse came privately to the Nonentities from the council, then blazed into the headlines. It was a shock for many who had believed that the agreement to keep the theatre open for 15 years was final.

Their feelings were summed up in the annual report: "This is a sorry end to the Nonentities' labour of 29 years to maintain living theatre in Kidderminster, coming as it does just after we thought we had devised a foolproof plan for a further 15 years. To rebuild the theatre on a new site would cost at least £150,000 and the District Valuer's price for the Playhouse would not ego far towards this".

Meanwhile the society had opened its season with Brush with a Body and Simple Spymen, then the delightful Giradoux play, The Enchanted. The new year musical was Summer Song, with Pauline Evans and Graham Orr in good form and Denis Smith as the composer Dvorak. Waiting in the Wings, which inevitably had casting difficulties, and Goodnight, Mrs Puffin completed the programme.

The Carpet Trades society played No, No, Nanette but the KAOS was unable to cast the show of its choice.

The professional season was opened by the Cockpit Theatre Trust with four plays, Arms and the Man, The Tiger and the Horse, The Moon is Blue and The Gentle Avalanche, but lost much of its effect by constant use of black drapes.

Donald Edwards's rep played Spider's Web (a rare appearance by Myra Barron), Signpost to Murder, Plan for a Hostess, Private Lives, Charley's Aunt, Key Witness, Hay Fever and Mary, Mary.

Opera lovers had a bonus with four productions, Susanna's Secret, II Tabarro, Cosi Fan Tutte and Don Pasquale. The music hall show was here again and the pantomime was Aladdin.

The event of the end of the season was the benefit night for Bill Morris, stage manager since the theatre re-opened 19 years earlier. It marked no more than his reaching retirement age; only the bulldozers are likely to separate him from his theatre.

It was he who went round the derelict building with the Director in 1945, seeking out long-hidden drains, he who brought his son, Ken Morris, to become theatre electrician and later his grandson to learn the mysteries of scene-shifting.

Bill Morris has been property man, stoker, plumber, bartender and bill-sticker. He has done every job in the theatre except look after the box office. He has appeared in shows as far apart as My Sister Eileen in 1950 and Barefoot in the Park in 1966.

The benefit show was staged by his friends from the amateur societies; after the curtain the Director presented him with a cheque for £258.

Takings on the season were £3,000 down and the theatre lost £4,000 - some justification for fixing the figure of subsidy needed at £5,000 (bearing in mind that repertory had been restricted by lack of funds).