Below is an article written by one of the founding members of our group, Alan Cremer, that gives a great insight into the fledgling days of the Riverside Players
As those of you who are connected to the Internet may already know I recently celebrated my sixty-tenth birthday! One of the possible misconceptions of "old-age" is that, purely on the strength of longevity alone, some people might be interested in what you have to say. To those who have endlessly heard it all before I apologise, but I did think that some of our newer and younger members might be interested in some of the evolution of Riverside Players as we are today, and in some of the peaks and troughs that we scaled and fell into along the way. I had better say straight away, in case any traditionalists get their feathers ruffled by anything I write, that all that follows is my own personal experience and in some cases opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the current management nor of anyone else!
When I arrived in Eynsford, newly married, in 1962 the village boasted a truly traditional "amateur drama group" which was formed, I think, in 1932 and was called The Eynsford Players. It had tremendous support from the community, and a Village Hall production in those days was something that EVERYONE went to as a matter of course, although it has to be said that there were not quite so many rival attractions and also nothing like as much private transport. I seemed to arrive at the same time as a number of new residents, for instance Pollyhaugh was fairly new and brought in a lot of new blood. Worthy as "The Players" were they did tend to stick to tried and tested material, "The Ghost Train", "Shop at Sly Corner" and so on. I also had a very strong feeling that it was somewhat strictly socially striated as was nearly always the custom with Village Drama Groups. One section of the population did the acting, directing and producing, another section did the "technical" stuff such as it was in those days, and another built the scenery and did the manual jobs. It seemed to me that these strata were far from totipotential and once placed in one "file" it seemed very unlikely that one could aspire to being re-filed in a new category! So well-supported was the theatre that some of us were of the strong opinion that the village could well assimilate two more productions per year and thus was born "The Riverside Drama Group". We were determined that we would try to perform more contemporary and testing works which would extend the talents of all sections of the Group. Our first productions, therefore, were "The Chalk Garden", "The Gioconda Smile", and "The Hot Tiara" which at the time were all very demanding productions and very much "of their time" theatrically speaking. I need say no more than they were an huge success and swept the board at the Annual Kentish Times Drama Awards Ceremony which was a very big event indeed in those days. Inevitably the Group to some extent was a victim of its own success and its great problem was finance.
Putting on such productions to a high standard was very expensive even then, especially in terms of licences and performing rights. Thank heaven the local Arts Council would fairly generously under-write and compensate any production that lost more than £10. By a stroke of amazing good fortune we always managed to "lose" round about that amount and were thus greatly helped to put on the next production by a generous grant. Well done Treasurer, and thank you local rate-payers! We somehow had to find a way to accumulate some capital to ensure the future if possible. It seemed to me that the only way to do this would be to put on a production that didn't cost us anything much especially in terms of books and licences etc.. The only way to do this was to write a show ourselves and produce it at minimum expense. I had done a fair bit of writing for "Gang-Shows" and the like in London and volunteered, with some temerity, to write a full-length "Revue" for Riverside. The Committee bravely accepted my offer, and thus was created our first home-made show "Other Parts Were Played By......." To the amazement of all of us I think, it filled the Hall to overflowing every night and was a smash with the local Press. When the dust had settled I think that the Group was solvent to the tune of about £400 which were riches indeed at that time! In our current listing (although I notice that "Other Parts...." is missing from the list---maybe that's Freudian!!!) since that time we have 97 productions listed and I have appeared in 64 of them. I was also slightly surprised to see that I have written 25 of them! Suffice it to say that the Group went from strength to strength, attracting marvellous talent also from outside the village. There is of course only a certain amount of talent to go round, and people will inevitably make their own choices about where they want to exercise their own gift. Totally unintentionally, in due time, it became more difficult to support two active groups in the village and four or five major productions in a year. Bear in mind that the Women's Institute also had a very active Drama Section who put on a fairly regular production, and that I was writing and directing Gang Shows for the local Scouts and Guides which had enormous support from parents and the community at large. Almost inevitably something had to give, and so gradually the two major Groups merged and became the "Riverside Players". On a personal note let me say that this was absolutely against my will! I was fantastically proud of Riverside Drama Group and all it had achieved and would not have surrendered that name in a million years. However, I suspect wiser, and certainly more diplomatic, counsels prevailed, and the compromise achieved.
THE DRAMA OF IT ALL by Alan Cremer
Anybody who has "trod the boards" knows very well that theatre stages can be dangerous places. We have had several accidents on our own stage. I personally ended up in plaster for six months after some individual removed a set of stairs from the side of our stage while we were striking a set in semi-darkness one Sunday morning. I have often wondered whether that person was just careless or a critic! Believe me the stage as it is at the moment is light years away from how it was then in terms of safety and quality of equipment. The lighting we had consisted of battens of bulbs covered with coloured cellophane, and a set of real footlights. The presence of traditional footlights sounds very romantic but in practice they were a curse. They were placed, obviously, just in front of the curtains, which meant that it was totally impossible to do anything in front of the curtains when they were closed. Can you imagine, for instance, now doing a pantomime with no facility for "front of tabs" crossovers? When I wrote my first "Revue"-type show I realised immediately that this situation made the whole thing impossible to produce. In a show with about 20 different items in it, it was essential to be able to play front of tabs between sketches. I approached the then Trustees to ask if we could build a temporary extension to the stage for the duration of the show. Traditionalists to a person they were practically apoplectic at the mere suggestion. I was equally adamant and had to tell my cast that in the circumstances the show couldn't go on. Fortunately we had one or two "influential" people involved in the show and they negotiated on my behalf. We got permission to build my extension on the strict understanding, on pain of death, that all would be restored to the norm IMMEDIATELY the show was over. This was agreed and the show went on. On the Sunday morning after, when we were striking, we were just about to attack the front of stage when the Chairman of the Trustees arrived. "Oh Alan", he said, "I wonder if you would mind leaving your structure there until next weekend. It will be our Produce Show and we thought that it would be very nice to use it for the auction". I readily agreed, on the understanding that I couldn't re-assemble Riverside to take it down so they would have to do it themselves. This was agreed. To cut a long story short everyone could see how useful the extension was and nearly everyone wanted to use it. We built it in 1963 and it is STILL there, 42 years later! I often wonder how long it would be there if it wasn't just a "temporary" structure!
The "Dimmers" that we had for our lighting were massive rheostats attached to the walls on either side of the stage, worked from the floor as there were no "Wings" in those days, by sliding up and down great sliders inside a metal grill. The ones in use were easily identified as they always glowed red-hot! The smoke that inevitably rolled around the stage in those days was the genuine article not produced by some clever machine. One of our aims was to improve the technical situation and one of our electronic geniuses designed and built electronic dimmers which were compact and did not heat. As there needed to be rather a lot of them and other controls our next problem was where to put them. After much negotiation we got the go-ahead to build and install the gantry which is just behind the proscenium arch. The gantry was duly constructed and the great day came when we were to haul it into place. With much application of ropes and pulleys it was eventually placed in situ and now came the delicate task of bolting it into place. Believe it or not I was not only small but also light in those days, and I was given the dubious "honour" of ascending an huge ladder to apply the finishing touches. As I reached proscenium level the ladder slipped and fell down (nobody was HOLDING it of course!) and I went with it. With the lightning reflexes which are often engendered by blue blind panic, as I passed the gantry I managed to grab the angle-iron forming the edge. As I hung, and swung, there, seemingly several thousand feet above stage level, I looked down to see everybody else just rolling about with laughter, never mind me! They did eventually recover themselves sufficiently to unhook my frozen fingers from the gantry and restore the ladder, but it seemed like hours. Our dear old gantry subsequently provided hours of unscripted fun in many productions. Remember that all the operations were performed by the technical people actually from the gantry where all the "works" were. They nearly all smoked while this was happening, and it was quite customary, usually during the most dramatic moment of a production, to see a lighted fag-end drift down from above! There were also many intrusive appearances of gramophone records which were then used for effects and music. It's a bit difficult to ad lib away the sudden appearance of a 45 r.p.m. disc, for instance, in the middle of a Shakespearean speech! Neither the River Room, as it now is, nor the Darenth Room existed in those days. There was a tiny sort of lean-to structure where the River Room now is, but there was no river bank outside. If you opened a window you could lean out and dabble your hand in the river. This edifice had an asbestos roof and on one occasion somebody had a birthday and we opened a bottle of champagne. This was done with slight abandon, and the cork went straight through the roof leaving a largeish hole! Dressing-room space was somewhat at a premium as that space was all we had. It was certainly very "cosy", but you rapidly found out who your friends were! It is hard to imagine now that I once wrote and directed a show which had a total personnel of 103! We overcame the problem by having a marquee pitched on the area which now houses the Darenth Room. This was a Scout Gang Show largely with young people but with the invaluable help of Riverside. Riverside itself eventually formed a very successful Youth Group, under the guidance of Moira Darby and the leadership of Phil Holden, which we called the Young Theatre Players or Y.T.P.'s. They had several productions of their own, but also appeared in many of the "Senior" productions, and many of them went on to become very successful with other groups as well as our own. What an asset it is to have the interest of young people to enhance the present and secure the future, as is amply demonstrated by our current brilliant Youth Group.
Like every Theatre Group we had our memorable moments. We once did a very intense drama called "The Man Outside". Moira Darby was playing a disabled actress and spent the entire production in a wheel-chair. I played a Detective, and at one stage had to walk on to speak to Moira concerning her description of the "Man" whom she swore was watching her from an overlooking hillside. I walked solemnly up to her wheel-chair, introduced myself, and produced my note-book. "Now madam", I said, officiously, "I understand that the man you describe has BLUE HAIR and BROWN EYES!" She looked at me open-mouthed while I struggled. There appeared to be only one thing I could say. "Please excuse me madam", I waffled,"I just hope that the Inspector doesn't find out that I am colour-blind"! Poor Moira, I did that sort of thing a few times and I am sure that she was always convinced that I did it deliberately. I swear that I didn't, as true as I am riding this elephant! A really major "happenstance" occurred during a production of "Mother Bonaventure" as it was then called. The action of the play takes place in a Convent, a tower of which dominates upstage centre. The whole denouement occurs in the final scene when we discover that the murderer is the Doctor, who then rushes up the steps to the tower and commits suicide by throwing himself off the top. On this occasion the actor tripped on the bottom step and, as he lay there, our "Techies", undaunted and dead on cue, threw the dummy which was meant to be his body off the gantry. What a great scene! The suicidal Doctor actually passed by his own body on the way to eternity. The first pantomime I wrote was "Jack and the Beanstalk". During the magical "beanstalk growing" scene halfway up the beanstalk collapsed back into its hole. My speech at the time?
"Oh dear oh dear, now there's a thing,
You can't even rely on Fairy String!"
There was also the great "icing explosion". I was playing Albert in "Sailor Beware" and Aunt Edie absent-mindedly places Shirley's wedding cake on the sofa. As I go to sit on it she is meant to whip it away, but on this occasion didn't quite make it! I sat heavily on the plaster-of-Paris cake and we were sweeping up "icing" for weeks after.
One of the things which we enjoyed greatly at one time were productions which we called "Road Shows". These were shows which were designed in such a way, with the minimum of scenery lighting and props., that we could transport them around the country and perform them for charity, hospital patients, handicapped children, old people and the like, in short, any audience that couldn't easily escape! We also did several "concerts" for people's Christmas parties and special occasions, although these performances were mainly "nice little earners". Some of these occasions were absolutely hilarious. I am certain that no one who was there will ever forget the Central Electricity Generating Board's Christmas Party in Holborn. The whole thing took place in an huge, dingy basement, and the twenty or so of us in the show were, literally, given a broom cupboard in which to change! There must have been two to three hundred people at tables scattered all over the area which had a small square cleared in the middle of the room, at floor level, in which we were to perform. As is customary with basements there were enormous brick pillars every few yards as a result of which of the 2-300 people present about 20 could see us and even fewer hear us over the cacophonous "people-noise"! The din was such throughout the show that we couldn't even hear one another. I remember in particular Sally Littlefield, who was eleven at the time, was dressed as a cockney lad and was to sing "When father Papered the Parlour". Neither a note not a word could be heard above the din but she went through the whole thing with total aplomb and didn't miss a beat. What a trouper! I remember saying to her at the end of the show that, as far as the stage was concerned, that was just about the worst thing that could happen to her, and she had done it now and come out smiling. Everything from now on would be plain sailing.
A memory that I shall never forget was a show that we did for a group of variously handicapped children in Orpington. That evening turned out to be pure magic for various reasons. The show we were travelling at the time was a pseudo-Western called "Ma-Who's My Pa"? Among other things, that night, was born on of Riverside's "traditional" jokes. Eric Darby, God bless him, played the Barman in this epic and he had one line: "There's a coach coming in!" Eric was a magical chorus-member as he was always in character, always acting while on stage. So busy was he every night conversing with his customers and serving drinks that he always missed his cue, and about six other members of the cast would then chorus "There's a coach coming in!" That is the reason, for those who are mystified by it, that, whenever there is a pregnant pause, especially during rehearsals, you can bet that one of us older Riversiders will yell "There's a coach coming in!" I always think of it as a kind of living memorial to dear old Eric.
As I said before, this particular night we were performing for children and teen-agers with various disabilities, many of them, for instance suffering from Downe's syndrome. But, from the very first note of this show, they simply picked it up and ran with it. They were not for one moment prepared to be a non-participating, static audience. They joined the chorus-line and danced and sang, they "shot" one another and rolled about in stylised agony, they took very firm sides and booed the villains and hissed the goodies, albeit not always in the right order! It was one of the most amazing nights in my entire theatrical experience. Boy, did they enjoy themselves! If anyone ever needed a reason to explain to themself why we participate in this strange, esoteric, very public activity, they would need only to look back on that magical evening. It was one of the most heart-warming, loving, appreciative experiences that anyone could ever have. There wasn't one of us at the end who didn't have that lovely warm feeling that comes so seldom, and at the same time a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye.
What a long way we have come since 1962, when it is recorded that the Director of a play called the Chairman and said, "look, I want to have a rehearsal tomorrow at three.Can I have the Stage Manager, the carpenter, the Props. person, the electrician and all stage-hands present?" "Certainly", said the Chairman, He'll be there!". We have equipment now of which we would never have dreamed in those days, and our seating arrangements by comparison are out of this world. Our list of productions, both indoors and out, stands comparison with that of any professional group. And what an amazing plethora of talent we have in the Group at present and with whom we have had the privilege of performing in the past. Long may it last, and what a sobering thought it is to remind ourselves that we are the present history of the Group in the making.
If my statistics are correct I believe that "Oliver" will be our 100th. major production, not counting Concerts and Roadshows. This is a fantastic milestone in our evolution. Let us all keep in mind, therefore, the fact that milestones don't just show you how far you've come they also point the way to where you are going.
"Good my Lord, will you see the Players well-bestowed?
Do you hear; Let them be well-used;
For they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of their time".
Hamlet.
Alan Cremer