Theatre – Page 77 – Ian Louis Harris

Image borrowed from Betty’s Birthday Blog on the “nigelthedame” website – click here – with thanks for both the image and the information about this production.

With gratitude to a posting on the Streatham,Balham & Tooting Memories Facebook Group, talking about the Streatham Odeon, I remembered going to see as a small child, Dick Emery (amongst others) in panto there. I did a bit of Googling to find out about it and found out quite a bit – not least through the blogpost linked above.

So, that year I saw Dick Emery, Joe Brown and no doubt some other names I would now recognise, in a production by Audrey Lupton & Arthur Lane.

An article on It’s Behind You! – Pop Stars In Panto, describes this aspect of Joe Brown’s performance:

In 1968 Joe was at the Odeon Streatham in Cinderella with Dick Emery. Joe played Buttons and as part of his routine to entertain Cinderella he performed a multi instrumental spot. In this he played guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo lutes and even a mandolin!

Is it possible that my later-day love of early music and stringed instruments for the playing thereof was formed all the way back then? Unlikely as I had no memory of Joe Brown’s multi-instrumentation.

More likely is that I caught an earworm at that performance – Joe Brown singing I’m Henery The Eighth, I Am – the hive mind of the Streatham, Balham & Tooting Memories Facebook Group seems pretty sure that Joe sang that song in this panto. For sure I picked it up as a party piece when still a very small nipper – probably at my parents’ behest as they were keen Players’ Theatre-istas before my time and loved that sort of music hall song.

I have found an official review of this panto -in the Guardian – written by an un-woke eleven-year-old named Victoria Bourne:

Victoria Bourne Cinderella Guardian 27 Dec 1968, Fri The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

The thing that made the event especially memorable for me, was being summoned onto the stage by Dick Emery himself and answering some fiendishly difficult questions in a manner that, for some reason, seemed to make the audience laugh.

This occasion might, technically, have been the first time I ever “trod the boards” personally and certainly my first interaction with a professional performer.

I was not to see my fine words dealt with by a professional performer again until 1992, when the late great Chris Stanton (coincidentally another fine comedy actor who latterly did good panto) was the first of many to perform my lyrics in NewsRevue.

Chris Stanton: Absurdist & Realist, A Personal Tribute, 9 March 2020

So why did Dick Emery pick on me for the honour of joining the cast on stage and being an unwitting, unpaid comic? The answer is lost in the mists of time.

Possibly I waved my hand and shouted “me! me!” more vigorously than anyone else. Or perhaps my mum did the vigorous waving and shouting for me. Or maybe I just looked like the sort of cocky little kid that central casting would have chosen for the role.

We returned the following year to see Peter Noone and Norman Vaughan in Aladdin, but that, as they say, is another story.

Aladdin, Streatham Odeon, c29 December 1969

I didn’t get summoned to the stage that second time.

What’s become of my pantomime performing career?…

…I should have asked, that following year.

It’s behind you!…

…the audience should have shouted.

My mum kept certain things and threw lots of things away. Two artefacts from an event at Nightingale survived the sands of time and mum’s occasional “mad-on” clear-outs across the decades.

The above clipping from the Jewish Chronicle is dated 27 May 1966.

Children of the Yavneh Jewish Kindergarten [based at Brixton Shule], presenting fruits for Shavuot at the Home For Aged Jews, Wandsworth [now named Nightingale House]

What a wonderful way to entrench the Jewish festival of Shavuot into the hearts and minds of the little children. Except, that, as history showed 50+ years later, it didn’t work on me and at least one other of the attendees:

A Winning Day, Culminating At Bill’s For A “Shavuot Not” BBYO Youth Club Regathering: , 1 June 2017

The Play’s The Thing…

The document below provides more detail about the event, which was presumably held a few days before the date of the newspaper notice:

A better quality picture, clearly from the same event. But Reuben Turner’s note hopes that people “will enjoy the play”. My guess is that he used a picture from the Shavuot event in his promotion letter for a play that was put on some days or weeks later.

I can only wonder at what the play might have been – perhaps a depiction of the traditional Shavuot story – The Book of Ruth.

*Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab*. *William Blake, actually. Not Reubens…and not Turner*

But in any case, what a cast!

The picture with Mr Turner’s letter has survived better, enabling me to identify several of the youngsters. I cannot name the adults in the picture – I’d hazard a guess that the man is Reuben Turner. The picture of the woman looks disconcertingly like my dad in drag, but I don’t think that was the case.

I am pretty sure I can name several of the kids, working from right to left…

…oy, so I must have learnt something at Yavneh…

Sara Monty [fairly sure] (standing);
Me (standing);
Sandra Corbman (sitting);
Maxine [Camlish?] (sitting);
Eve Cedar (standing);
Boy I cannot name (standing);
Girl I cannot name (sitting);
Jonathan Davies (standing);
Girl I cannot name (sitting);
Girl I cannot name (standing);
Jonathan Gold [fairly sure] (sitting);
Half a girl I can barely see, let alone name (standing).

Any help that a reader might offer to help fill in the gaps and/or pass this relic on to those who were in it would be much appreciated.

If anyone out there remembers anything at all about the show, I’d love to know. But it might well be that my love of theatre started there, 58 years ago as I write in 2024.

“My First Girlfriend”

I have very little recollection of my time at Yavneh Kindergarten, other than an impressionistic sense that I was happy there most of the time and that the experience did its job of preparing me to start school that autumn.

My only tangible memory is one that has been handed down to me by my mum, who used to take great pleasure in relating the following story in circumstances that might cause me maximum embarrassment.

One day, when my father asked me, as oft he would, to “report on the events of the day at Kindergarten”, I proudly announced:

I’ve got a girlfriend. She’s called Sandra.

When asked for more detail about my girlfriend, I stated that:

…we roll in the barrel together.

Whether my parents were able to keep a straight face at the time, and if so, how, I’ll never know.

As it happens, Sandra and I never did go out with one another, but we spent a fair chunk of our youth together through BBYO in Streatham and are still very much in touch to this day. Indeed Sandra was one of the Shavuot avoiders at our 2017 regathering and I expect to see her at the 2024 regathering about 10 days after this piece is published…

…if she is still speaking to me by then!

Update: Sandra Responds…

Brilliant stuff Ian. I also have some memories of being happy there but unfortunately I don’t remember the barrel.

Category: Theatre

Cinderella, Streatham Odeon, c30 December 1968