Interviews

Theatre Worker. Decline of theatre business; employment pattern; New Theatre, Cambridge; lighting; Number One theatres; pantomime; Regal Theatre, Boston; relationship between Cast and Technical Crew; Sunderland Empire; touring; union membership; West End theatres.

Interviewed by Tom Shallaker on 04/12/07

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TS: I’ll start by asking what your first memories of going to the theatre were.

MG: Pantomime – taken by my mother or an aunt generally, in the provinces. Places like Cambridge New Theatre, now demolished; Northampton New Theatre, now demolished; Boston New Theatre, now demolished.

TS: So pantomime was your first experience as a child?

MG: Like many other provincial people, yes. I lived in the fenlands, so theatres were few and far between, so, less opportunity to go to them really.

TS: So, pantomime was obviously your first experience, what was your first experience of actually going seeing a play? What was the first one you remember and what were your thoughts on that?

MG: I don’t think I went to see an amateur play, an amateur production. I suppose my first… ah yes I can remember now, my first pro visit to a play theatre, playhouse, was the Theatre Royal and Empire, Peterborough. To see The Penguin Players in Dial M for Murder, in 1957, so that was weekly rep.

TS: So the experience of going to the theatre, was that more important to you than the actual play you were seeing, or did that play in particular…

MG: Oh yes, I was just an 11 year old school boy: I was on a trip, one didn’t think about the play. It was just a magical evening out, going somewhere different, You’ve got no idea, you must come from a city, you’ve got no idea how bleedin’ borin’ life was in fenland villages in the 1950s! That was a magical thing, a trip to Peterborough even. You know, a major city of 84,000 souls. And the theatre, a real theatre, with cupids and red plush and gilt and things. I’d never actually been inside one before.

TS: So would you say it was that experience that inspired you to want to work in theatre?

MG: No. Yes, I was very interested, but… you’re using dramatic language, “inspired me” to work in theatre, no no no! It was just something that would be nice if it ever happened in the future. But in my station in life, I really knew that there was no chance of me working in theatre. My parents had slight artistic inclinations, but they weren’t going to let a child of theirs - my father was a civil servant, my mother was a schoolmistress - certainly weren’t going to let a child of theirs, who was academically inclined, waste his substance on frittering it away in theatre.

TS: So, tell me then how you actually got started off working in theatre.

MG: I started because even as a small boy I was interested, well, I was interested in architecture, and streetscapes, and with my mother I spent… well, my mother had taken me around churches, not great cathedrals but parish churches we used to visit, ride out into the countryside in the car, mother driving, and we’d always look at the parish church and we went to the museums, and I was one of those strange children who loved it. And I was interested in architecture and streetscapes, and I was also a natural historian. When I say natural historian I don’t mean academic, but I took an interest in the past and listened to people and asked questions. The New Theatre Boston closed in March 1960, and I was at the last show which was ‘The Billy Cotton Band Show’, and I went, the building had been closed and sold to Marks and Spencer’s next door to be demolished for an extension, and I got in touch with the manager. Myself and my school friend went around the empty building to look at it, then next door to that was the [Scala], a former cinema built in 1914, which had been closed in 1940. And again I got permission from the manager of the shop to, not Marks and Spencer’s – another shop, to go and look around that. So, I was interested in the buildings, and I’d also got to know the manager, simply by talking and asking questions, of the Odeon, the 1937 super cinema, and The Regal.
The Regal was owned by the same firm who’d closed the New Theatre. So I went to see the manager at The Regal and asked him questions about the New Theatre, and they were investing the proceeds from the sale of the New Theatre on building on a stage and dressing rooms to The Regal, the 1937 super cinema. So there was a gap of three years theatre provision in Boston and South Lincolnshire whilst they bought former maltings and then built stage, fly tower and dressing rooms. And Ralph Asford Howden, the managing director of the company, and manager of the Regal, said, because of course I was interested in the stage being built, said, ‘We’re opening at Christmas with panto, I suppose you’d better have a job.’.

TS: Nice.

MG: I was 17, that month, November ’63, and that was the actual start, my very first job in the business. Came to rehearsal, I was ASM, then we opened, and the show was a weekly touring panto. It did a fortnight at Boston, where it opened, then it toured to other dates for a week, and the next stage it was going to was Crewe, The New Theatre, Crewe, which at the time was dark. It had no staff, so they had to take their own staff with them. So I was asked if I would continue the work I was doing, which was ASMing for the show on tour. So I asked my parents if I could go on tour, and they, much to my surprise, gave me permission and arranged time off school - I was in the sixth form at the time - and off I trotted with Barry Wood productions and Babes in the Wood to Crewe, Buxton and Leek. So that was my introduction to the business, yes. Then on tour, the crew, when you said you were from the theatre you couldn’t get digs, we spent three nights kipping in a dressing room, three of us of the stage staff, wrapped in old stage draperies from the scene dock. But that’s how I started the business, with Ralph Aspland Howden at the Regal, Boston, saying ‘We open with panto, I suppose you’d better have a job’.

TS: So, tell me, you went to university in London…

MG: Well, before that, I finished in the sixth form, and every time there was a show at the Regal, which remained mainly a cinema but would do one night stands – ‘package shows’ they were called - and panto, and then week long shows, old time music hall or variety. And I would work on all the shows at The Regal until I left school in ’65, and as you’ve just said went up to London.

TS: So tell me how your career progressed then, once you were at university in London, because you started working in the theatre as a part timer whilst you were a student.

MG: Well, it’s a perfectly normal and standard phrase for you to use, but it makes assumptions when you say ‘How did your career progress?’, because… I hadn’t got a career. I was reading history, and I’d had the foresight to join NATTKE, the stage-hand and electrician’s union, whilst I was at the Regal, and I remember going to see the chief at The Odeon to join. He said, ‘You don’t need to join, mate, just doing part time work at the Regal’, I said, ‘No, I want to join’. Didn’t tell him why, but it meant that when I came to London, I could stand at the stage door, because I was in Chelsea on Kings Road, Chelsea, so, bed and breakfast, as it were, was free. I was near the West End, no problem with the tube and buses, or even walking if I was doing a get-out and had missed the last bus. So I would go, as one did in those days, go to the stage door, line up with anyone else, and asked for either the Chief Engineer if you were wanting electrics, or the Master Carpenter if you wanted stage work. For me, I could do both, so if one didn’t need me, then the other one might do. And that’s where my NATTKE membership came in because there’d be two or three young blokes, all the same age, very often, say, all fairly much beginners, but not absolute beginners, and the head of department came along and he’d look at you, and he’d say, ‘Are you NATTKE mate?’, ‘No sir’, ‘Are you NATTKE mate, ‘Yes sir’, ‘Right’.

TS: So it was just joining that union that really helped you get your first jobs in London?

MG: Oh yes, because it was essential, I can assure you in those days.

TS: So that was how you first started off in London. Was there anyone, professionally speaking, when you first started, who you found a great help to get you started, or anyone who made you want to pursue it further?

MG: No, I don’t think any one person, because of course, I didn’t start with any established company, or rep company. The staff at the Regal, Boston, had been there for donkey’s years, and worked for the firm in various other of their buildings and so on. On tour, I also worked whilst I was a student at the Edinburgh Festival. And of course West End theatres all have their own men and their own staffs. So, no, I learned a lot, and bloody fast too, but I can’t think of any particular person who was inspiring that I’d met in those days. There was one, in writing, who inspired all of us starting at that time, and that was Fred Bentham in TABS, the Strand Electric lighting magazine. But, I can’t say I was inspired by any particular person at that time. Other people later inspired me, but not to start.

TS: Well, do you want to say anyone who later on inspired you, whilst we’re on that?

MG: Oh I worked with several people, or got to know them, or read them. Francis Reed, who I’m very proud to say is a friend of mine, is an inspiring man. That’s lighting. In stage management, can’t say I was inspired in stage management.

TS: Says a lot about stage management.

MG: We’re not going into stars, but people I’ve worked with in that sense. No, you’ve caught me on that one, I was going to say, if I think of someone later, I’ll say so, but obviously, I’ve answered your question haven’t I, I haven’t come straight back at you with, Yes! So and so…

Interview continued...

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