Amateur Theatre

The Art of Coarse ...

Michael Green (1927-2018) was a journalist who had a passion for amateur dramatics, being a member of Questors Theatre. While working part-time at The Observer he developed a reputation for being able to enliven accounts of rugby matches that had been dull. Hutchinson invited him to write a humorous book about rugby. The Art of Coarse Rugby (1960) was the result. For him coarseness was the reality of what happens rather than the ideal that may be being aspire to. The book was well-received and sold well.

Other books followed in what became a fifteen-book series. It broke through to a mass audience with The Art of Coarse Acting (1964). It described how actors could be highly self-congratulatory and how some of them were able to remember all of their lines but not necessarily in the right order. He was invited to mount a show at the Edinburgh Festival. He accepted the offer. The show consisted of able professionals giving of their worst in a number of stage classics. In 1979 a version was staged in the West End. In person he could be disaster prone. His wife said of him that he was maddening but lovely. He had a talent for always spilling things. If a room was completely empty apart from one small object he would somehow manage to trip over it.

Location: 12 Mattock Lane, Ealing, W5 5BQ

Website: www.questors.org.uk

Angels Wardrobe Supplies

The core business of Angels Wardrobe Supplies is hiring costumes for theatrical and cinematic use.

In the 1830s Morris Angel started selling upper-class cast-offs from a stall on the eastern fringe of the West End.¹ At the time, it was the accepted practice that actors should provide their own costumes, therefore, they frequented the stand. Mr Angel's business developed to the point where he was able to open a shop. One day the enterprise was set upon a new course when an actor asked if he could rent some clothes rather than buy them.

In 2003 Angels relocated its principal warehouse from Camden to a four-storey building in Hendon. Five years later the business acquired the B.B.C.'s costume department. The deal extended the length of the firm's racks from five miles to eight. At the time, the Shaftesbury Avenue outlet extended over six floors. The Angel family still run the business.

Location: 119 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8AD (orange, turquoise)

1 Garrick Road, Hendon, NW9 6AA

Website: www.angelsfancydresscom www.fancydress.com

¹. Angels is also the term for private individuals who finance West End shows during their pre-production stage.

The Association of British Theatre Technicians

Location: 22 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0QL

Website: www.abtt.org.uk

The Lord Chamberlain and Stage Censorship

The Lord Chamberlain's department oversight of theatre censorship stemmed from the Theatres Act of 1843. It ended in 1968.

Location: St James's Palace, Marlborough Road, SW1A 1BQ (blue, turquoise)

Website: www.royal.uk/inside-the-royal-household www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/1968-theatre-censorship/lord-great-chamberlain-evidence

Oh! Calcutta!

Ken Tynan worked as a theatre critic for The Observer newspaper, as well as for The New Yorker magazine. In 1963 he persuaded Sir Laurence Olivier to create for him the post of dramaturg of the National Theatre. Two years later Mr Tynan became the first person to say fuck on British television. In 1968 the Theatres Act ended the Lord Chamberlain's powers to censor plays. The new freedom prompted the critic to create the sex-related revue Oh! Calcutta! Those who contributed to its creation included John Lennon, the playwright Samuel Beckett, and the actor and playwright Sam Shepard.

The first production of the show was mounted in New York. The cast preparing for the London production were ejected from their first rehearsal space because the landlords were worried that they would themselves be prosecuted for living off immoral earnings. The Ministry of Defence had no such qualms and allowed Tynan and his associates to rent the gymnasium at The Duke of York's Headquarters. In 1969 the show opened at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. Tynan's 1% of the gross takings was able to underwrite a lavish lifestyle for several years.

Location: The Duke of York's Headquarters, The King's Road, SW3 4RY (red, purple)

The Frank Matcham Society

The theatres in London that the architect Frank Mitcham designed included The Coliseum (1904) and The Palladium (1910).

Website: www.frankmatchamsociety.org.uk

Pepper's Ghost

John Henry Pepper (1821-1900) improved Henry Dirck's (1806-1873) invention to create the Pepper's ghost illusion. In 1862 he d buted the technology at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, which acted as a public showcase for scientific innovation. It was used as an effect for a Dickens Christmas ghost story. People responded so positively to it that he started to tour it commercially.

Location: 55 Colworth Road, Leytonstone, E11 1HZ

The Royal Polytechnic Institution, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW (blue, turquoise)

Props

Lewis & Kaye Hire

Lewis & Kaye is a props business that was founded by Simon Kaye (n Kamenetzky), a dealer in antique silver. For over thirty years the company was run by his son Ernest Kaye (1922-2012), who had been one of the electrical engineers who had built the LEO computer for Lyons.

In 2012 Lewis & Kaye was part of the Farley Group.

Location: 1-17 Brunel Road, Ealing, W3 7XR

Website: www.farley.co.uk/lewis-and-kaye

Keith Prowse Hospitality

From 1954 to 1971 the Keith Prowse theatre ticket agency was owned by the colourful and quarrelsome businessman Peter Cadbury (1918-2006). Cadbury's own tastes were middle-brow. He once stated that he would only back a play if he thought the work would appeal to his mother. This prompted the playwright John Osborne to comment that theatrical success depended on "catching the fancy of a tasteless man's tasteless mother".

Location: Webb Ellis House, Rugby Road, Twickenham, TW1 1DS

Website: www.keithprowse.co.uk

Scenery

Elms Lesters Painting Rooms

Elms Lesters was a scene painting business. It occupied a purpose-built building (1904) that has Grade II listing.

Location: 1-5 Flitcroft Street, WC2H 8DH (blue, turquoise)

Philip James de Loutherbourg

The actor David Garrick concluded that a fresh approach to scenery was required to complement his new manner of performing.

Loutherbourg mounted productions in his Eidophusikon, a mechanical theatre.

Location: Lisle Street, WC2H 7BA. Loutherbourg's home was on the street. (red, pink)

The Seven Dials Playhouse

The Actors Centre enables actors to update their skills, in areas such as movement, singing, and speech, or acquire new ones.

In 2022 The Actors Centre metamorphosed in The Seven Dials Playhouse.

Location: Seven Dials Playhouse, 1a Tower Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 9NP (purple, blue)

Website: www.sevendialsplayhouse.co.uk

The Society for Theatre Research

Location: P.O. Box 78086, W4 9LP

Website: www.str.org.uk

Spotlight

The first edition of Spotlight was published in 1927. Only two copies sold that year.

Location: 7 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BY

Website: www.spotlight.com

The Stage

The Stage is the trade newspapers

Location: Stage House, 47 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XT

Website: www.thestage.co.uk

The Theatre Museum

The Theatre Museum was formed through the combination of the V. & A.'s Enthoven Collections, the British Theatre Museum Association, and a collection of Diaghilev costumes and sets that had been built up by Richard Buckle. The institution opened in Covent Garden in 1987. It closed in 2007.

Theatre Schools

Anna Scher Theatre

Anna Scher (1944-2023) founded the Anna Scher Theatre in 1968. She sought to create solidarity amongst the youths whom she taught; if one of them secured a job, they were encouraged to regard it as a success for them all.

Scher stopped teaching in 2020.

Location: St Silas Church, Penton Street, N1 9UL

Website: www.annaschertheatre.com

Sylvia Young Theatre School

Sylvia Young's daughter Frances Ruffelle was aged fifteen at the time. She was expelled from it after a single term.

Ms Ruffelle proceeded to create the roles of Dinah in Starlight Express (1984) and ponine (English-language version) in Les Miserables (1985) and to sing on Broadway.

Location: 1 Nutford Place, W1H 5YZ (blue, brown)

Website: www.syts.co.uk

The Victoria & Albert Museum

The Victoria & Albert Museum has a collection that covers the performing arts comprehensively. In 1955 Laurence Irving, the grandson of the actor Sir Henry Irving, proposed the idea of a theatre museum. The Irving Collection formed the nucleus of the British Theatre Museum, which opened in 1963 in an annexe of Leighton House in Kensington. In 1971 the institution was amalgamated with the Victoria & Albert Museum's theatrical collection to form the Theatre Museum, a branch of the V.&A.. From 1987 to 2007 the museum occupied a building in Covent Garden. It then relocated to its parent's South Kensington site.

Location: Cromwell Gardens, SW7 2RL (orange, grey)

Website: www.vam.ac.uk/info/theatre-performance-archive

Wendies

In the West End carpenters are known as Wendies . This is because they are reputedly only to work on shows with budgets.

Whistling

There is a superstition that it is unlucky to whistle in theatres. This derives from the fact that the flymen, who raised and lowered the backdrops, communicated with one another through whistles.

See Also: FOLK TRADITIONS

David Backhouse 2024

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