Tag: Pageant Players

The Vigil

British Newspaper Archive

John Haller (1909-1983) once told me that humorist Patrick Campbell (1913-1980) had produced a play The Vigil for our local drama group, the Horbury Pageant Players.

Patrick Campbell is probably best remembered today as Frank Muir’s opponent on BBC’s Call my Bluff but he was also well known as a journalist and drama producer.

In October 1955 John Haller succeeded Campbell, former head of B.B.C. northern drama programmes, as Chairman of the West Riding branch of the British Drama League, when Campbell accepted a post with the I.T.A., the Independent Television Authority, which had been created in the previous year.

The Vigil is a courtroom drama by Ladislas Fodor in which the gardener from the Garden of Gethsemane is accused by the Romans of stealing the body of Jesus.

It seems that the Pageants were disappointed that they hadn’t had more support from Horbury’s churches and chapels.

The Final Curtain

It was an emotional finale to Dick Whittington last Saturday when our producer for the last twenty years, Wendie Wilby, retired. The presentation included a framed copy of my sketch of her which I drew a few years ago (greatly enlarged here, but it brings out the texture of the watercolour better than a same-size scan).

The Pageant Players are also going to miss the support of her husband, retired joiner and pigeon fancier, David, who has been stage managing the shows for almost as many years. The only thing that’s missing from my portrait of him is the pencil behind his ear that seemed to be a permanent feature.

Dick Whittington

You’ve already seen my working drawings for the backdrops, so here’s the cast. I took a particular interest in Alderman Fitzwarren because he – or should I say ‘she’, as this is a pantomime – was wearing a three-cornered hat of the type that I need to practise drawing for my Adam and the Gargoyle comic strip.

As so often in a pantomime, the baddies get all the best parts, so Queen Rat (above, left), was greeted by enthusiastic boos from the audience whenever she appeared.

The End! – OH NO it ISN’T!

After fifty-one years, I’ve said that will be my last production with the Pageants. With Wendie stepping down it seemed like a good time to go but I’ll be interested to hear how they get on. Like many drama groups they’re now faced by sky-rocketing rents for theatre space. The price per hour in Horbury Academy is still quite a bargain if you are requiring the room for just a few hours, but the Pageants need their set-building weekends, three technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals and the four evenings of performances, plus a Saturday afternoon matinee.

Audience: Awww!

Pageants: No, it’s much worse than that!

Audience: AWWWWwwwwwww!!!

Cinderella

7.15 p.m.: The curtain goes up for the final performance of Cinderella, and I’m happy to see that the backdrop of Hardship House and Stoney Broke village looks fine. I’m glad that I put so much variety into the roofline and the chimney pots, because, once the chorus fills up the stage, that’s all that you can see of the scenery.

My forest scene looked suitably soft in my pen and watercolour sketch but in emulsion paint – which dries flat – and outlined in black line, it looks too flat and hard-edged.

At the curtain call, I’m called up on stage by Wendie Wilby, the producer, and presented with an inscribed clock to celebrate my fifty years scenery painting for the Society. It’s the nearest that I’ll ever get to a Lifetime Achievement award.