“Bottoms up! - Ding Dong
- Cheers!! “ and a very warm welcome to 2009.
Flushed with success after the splendid performances of “ The
Magic
Lozenge” way back
in the Old Year we look forward to various celebrations of 30 years of
our existence in the
year to come. As the person without whom Sheringham Savoyards would not
exist is our
President it is appropriate that his should be the first voice to be
heard on the subject.
I’m writing this almost exactly 30 years after the Inaugural
Meeting in
January 1979, and I
very pleased that The Sheringham Savoyards are still going strong, and
are mounting new
productions which I think are better than ever. I don’t know what
pleases me most – the
faithful handful of (not all that ancient) members who continue to
participate who were in
those early shows, or that new and enthusiastic friends arrive
constantly and find us worth
sticking with. “I am so proud” (to quote Pooh-Bah), and so grateful to
be your President.
Alan
Memories of things past.
There will be many of these spoken, written about and
possibly
performed during the year
but firstly to the more recent past.
November.
Our two performances of “The Magic Lozenge” attracted much favourable
comment
both from members of the audience and the invited luminaries from NODA
to wit
Sue Dupont and John Warburton. They were both full of praise for
performance and
production as well as the dialogue and music. That we attracted 65%
Box Office over the
2 nights for a completely new and unknown work says much for the
Society’s reputation
and capacity to entertain.
December.
Some 20 Savoyards braved the cold, wind and rain on Saturday 13th to
sing carols in
Sheringham town centre. We raised the magnificent sum of £210, which
has been given to
the East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices.
January.
Rehearsals for “The Sorcerer” started on the 9th under the “baton?”
(not yet!) of
Karen Smith combining for the first (scheduled) time the tasks of
repetiteur and Musical
Director. Karen has been instrumental in securing the Society a
valuable new contact as
her understudy on the piano as and when necessary. Lester Shaw played
the piano for the
Auditions and willingly turned out on the Saturday morning to give
auditionees the chance
to go over their pieces with him before their actual performances in
the afternoon. We are
very pleased to welcome him “on board”.
Karen was part of the panel, also containing Producer Malcolm Poore and
Assistant
Producer Moira Weller, who auditioned members for Principal parts in
The Sorcerer on
Saturday 24th.
The results of those Auditions is this Cast List:
After our most junior Honorary Members performed with such
distinction
as Rupert’s
“Demons” in The Magic Lozenge we are pleased to be welcoming them back
as John
Wellington Wells’ “Sprites” in The Sorcerer – are they in danger of
being type cast at such
an early stage of their careers I wonder?
Little Theatre Concert
The Sheringham Savoyards are combining with Sheringham Players and The
Cromer and
Sheringham Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society for an evenings
entertainment at The
Little Theatre on Jan 31st. as a fund raiser for the Theatre. We are
performing various
solos, duets etc,(hardly any G&S !) as well as our favourite
G&S choruses.
February
Do not miss the Ceilidh on 14th (by all means bring your Valentine!!
and any other
friends and acquaintances – there is plenty of room!) The band
Rig-A-Jig-Jig has a proven
track record of providing a thoroughly entertaining evening. Gresham
Village Hall has all
mod cons and is large enough for all the dancing to be done in comfort.
Tickets are £8 but
do not include your food & drink which is in the famous
Savoyards Plate & Bottle
tradition. The evening starts at 7.30pm but in Cinderella fashion we
have to back in our
pumpkins by midnight. Contact Val Williams for tickets 01263 860499
It has to be said that at the time of writing ticket sales have not
come up to expectations so
please commit to this evening – it really is a case of the more the
merrier apart from any
financial implications. We do really need to know numbers by Feb 6th
latest to establish
the viability of the event.
May
Our 30th Anniversary Boat Trip is on Saturday 16th. Val awaits your
deposits for
this (£5) Details were in the last NewsLetter and will
be repeated in the April edition.
June
Performances are Wed 10th to Sat 13th at 7.30pm and at 2.30pm
on Sat
13th- our first
ever Matinee!! We hope to get the set up on Sunday 7th in time enough
to allow for a
technical rehearsal later that day. Costume + orchestra rehearsal will
be on Monday 8th
with a full Dress Rehearsal on Tuesday 9th. So put all this in your
diaries now at an early
stage!!
Guest Night will be Wednesday 10th when we welcome other society
representatives, and
of course any Friends who wish to join us, for drinks and nibbles post
performance in The
Hub. Friends are also welcome to join us at our Saturday Night Post
Show Party, also in
the Hub, – those of us still conscious after two performances will also
attend!
Mannington Hall.
The Little Theatre Society has asked us to give a Concert performance
of The Sorcerer
outside in the grounds of Mannington Hall as a fund raising venture for
the theatre on
Sunday 21st at 6.30pm. As it is the Longest Day we hope to
complete
the performance in
daylight!! - ? including the 2nd Act at Midnight??? The backdrop of a
real hall will be well
in keeping with the author’s specification of the action being outside
Sir Marmaduke’s
Mansion. The concert will be in full costume but with Karen
accompanying and not the
orchestra used in the theatre. We have asked our old friend Alan Spoors
to write and
deliver a narration between the musical numbers. A whole new experience
beckons - for
many of us have not performed al fresco before - well - not in words
& music anyway.
November
Our Autumn Show is to be a celebration of 30 years of Sheringham
Savoyards -
being a medley of all the G&S shows we have performed over the
years including as many
people as possible who took part in them – even if they no longer
regularly appear on
stage with us. Pam Warren is to be our Producer for this but will
enlist the aid of other
notable personages along the way. We are pleased to welcome back Sarah
Chadwick as
Musical Director for this show – evidently her experiences guiding us
through Yeoman
have not scarred her too much!! (either that or she is a closet
masochist!). Karen has also
agreed to accompany us again for this show we are pleased to say. Pam
would welcome
any memorable anecdotes of the last 30 years, that can be told in
public, from members of
the Society. No doubt they will form part of the between musical
numbers entertainment.
Any Other Business
1) As one of the theatre’s resident Amateur
performing
Societies we “do our bit” in helping The Little Theatre with fund
raising by performing for
their benefit – January & June for instance- but volunteers on
an individual basis are
always helpful. At present The Little Theatre is very short of
volunteers to fill the Coffee
Bar rota. The Coffee Bar is an excellent source of revenue but has lost
a number of
volunteers recently for differing reasons and may have to cut down on
its opening hours if
the rota cannot be filled. If anyone can find a few hours to spare to
help out please contact
Front of House Manager Steve Williams by e-mail:
steve@sheringhamlittletheatre.com
or
on 01263 822117
2) Kath & Maurice Whiting have a cottage in a village 5 miles
from the Med. It is
available for holiday lets between May and September. Sleeps 4. Very
reasonable rates.
Contact them by e-mail:
kandm.whiting@virgin.net
or on 01263 821185.
------------------------------
The following is the first of an occasionally produced series
(depending on interest and
further contributors’ willingness to provide copy) of recollections as
to how the person
concerned “found” G&S. Who better to start than the fellow who
was instrumental in
bringing G&S to Sheringham on a regular basis? – so over to you
Mr Stables.
“ A ten inch 78rpm record, played on a wind-up gramophone” - how many
of
you know
just what that means? This was how, as a very young boy (I’m talking
1930s), I heard a
brass band in selections from IOLANTHE - starting with a truncated
March
of the Peers,
and turning the record over for the Sentry’s song among others. (It’s
still my favourite
G&S opera). About 10 years later the D’Oyly Carte came on tour
and I saw my first
professional show (GONDOLIERS) at Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre, a milieu
not very
different (I think) from London’s Savoy fifty years earlier, and
followed in successive
years by YEOMEN, IOLANTHE, MIKADO etc. The Ko-Ko parts were sung by
Graham
Clifford who came after Martyn Green and before Peter Pratt (we’ve
reached 1939-1945
now). I began learning the piano about then, and eventually borrowed
scores from the City
Library to annoy the neighbours with (not true!) not just G&S,
but lots of musical
comedies in that tradition from the early 1900s- The Arcadians, Maid of
the Mountains,
and incidentally Toad of Toad Hall.
At school I met a fellow enthusiast or two and began to appreciate the
social bonds this
could help to form. I remember a lecture-recital on MIKADO, still on
78s - 12 inch now - gramophone
still needing winding! After the war came “austerity”. The many amateur
societies for which the provincial cities had been famous had not yet
resurfaced. I do recall
a good PRINCESS IDA at the local College of Education (as it would now
be called).
I moved to Essex when “long-playing” vinyl records (33rpm) were just
coming in. By then
I was married and starting a family. We were near enough to London to
visit its shops and
theatres – I saw SORCERER just after D’Oyly Carte took it back into
their repertoire.
John Reed was John Wellington Wells and I remember his coming on
downstage left for a
curtain-call, surprising us all as we were all looking upstage right
where a magic firework
had just exploded.
Then to the land of Music, Wales, where I witnessed a local IOLANTHE a
few miles up
the River Severn from our home. Later I took our children to a matinee
PIRATES at a
cinema-with-a-stage in Shrewsbury, about an hour’s train journey away
“over the border”.
Thomas Round was a memorable Frederic in this D’Oyly Carte tour. The
kids sat very
quietly(!) through it, but once home in the early evening poured out
all the details (plot,
costume etc.) to their Mum, who had stayed at home with our youngest,
aged about four.
It was in 1967 I came to Norfolk to look after the Holt &
Sheringham Libraries, and
only then approached the possibility of “doing it myself”. I was by now
an Associate
Member (sort of ‘Friends of D’Oyly Carte’) and actually got my name
into
the
correspondence column of their magazine, called (yes!) “The Savoyard.”
My latest
contribution was an appreciatory poem following a feature in the
previous issue which
carried photographs of nine soprano chorus ladies each with a brief
C.V. and so on. These
had all included the phrase “Not married”, which I think would not be
stressed nowadays.
Even in 1971 I felt it called for comment. As I began my ode "Come all
you lonely
bachelors, who seek the marriage mart, See the new Savoyard number from
the press of
D’Oyly Carte!" and went on to extol the girls’ attractiveness. The
heading was “By all
that’s marvellous…” (young Frederic again). Well, they printed it,
members received their
copy by post, and that very day I was rung up by one Michael Sanders of
North Walsham
- some of you will remember him - and “the rest is history”. The Choral
Society in NW did
a concert version of IOLANTHE and I was in the chorus of peers. Next
year came a fullscale
MIKADO, (costumes, scenery, piano accompaniment). I auditioned for
Pish-Tush
and to my intense surprise was offered Ko-Ko. Then we gave TRIAL BY
JURY
(Centenary year 1975) and guess who was the Learned Judge. All these
were presented in
NW Community Centre and “toured” to Sheringham Little Theatre.
Eventually as you
may have heard, a local society was formed and, greatly daring or “with
bated breath” put
on a PINAFORE in 1979.
A B S