The School Play (Inspiration Point)

He couldn't have appeared more incongruous if he had been dressed in a diver's outfit! As it was, he was dressed in a well-cut light-grey suit, pale-blue shirt and dark-blue tie, tied in a larger than usual Windsor knot. His highly polished black shoes positively gleamed, a pink handkerchief drooped from his left breast pocket. In one beautifully manicured hand he carried the sort of hat you only see in Hollywood films, the other held an elegantly carved walking cane, which he held at an acute angle to his body. He was tall, lightly built, had longish, fair wavey hair combed straight back from his very pale complexioned face. We all just stared at him and he gazed languidly back at us with clear blue eyes that gave no hint of what he was thinking.

A mixed class of thirty-two children in their last year at school in the East End of London, all of whom had just come through the trials and tribulations of World War II, all of whom knew about the problems of rationing and all of whom were wearing clothes that had clearly been the subject of the government's exhortation to "Make do and mend", studied him closely. How many coupons did that suit take? How much did it cost? Where had he been during the war? No one spoke but we all wondered! The girls stared in admiration at this vision from the glamorous world of the stage, the boys took a different view!

If he hadn't been accompanied by Miss Beswick, our Headmistress, I shudder to think of the greeting he might have been given. But, he was with Miss Beswick and that changed everything. Miss Beswick herself changed everything! She was to put it very mildly an intimidating woman. Just under six feet tall, from her strong brown brogue shoes and thick brown knitted stockings to her thinnish gingery hair that clustered around her head, rather like a cloud around a church steeple, she was overpowering to staff and pupils alike. When you stood in front of her you immediately felt reduced in size and importance, convinced that her watery blue eyes, concentrating on you through the lenses of rimless circular spectacles, was able to see into your very soul and aware of your every thought before you thought it. When she entered a room all would rise and silence reigned until she left. Then an almost audible sigh of relief would be heard. We all waited to hear why she had interrupted our usual boring English lesson. We didn't have long to wait.

"This gentleman," she announced grandly and with what passed for a smile. "Is Mr. Crispin Sparshatt. He is a well-known and respected drama teacher and will be joining the staff for the rest of term to assist in the production of 'The School Play'." This was news to us, we had never heard of him and there hadn't even been a whisper about a school play. We were a school that was strictly sports orientated. The arts and academia were for cissies, so why introduce him to us? We were soon to find out. The educational powers that be, had decided that that the arts must feature more strongly in the curriculum. To this end the entertainments industry had been coerced into sending some of their most accomplished producers and directors into chosen schools to spread the word. We had been chosen as the first experiment and had been allocated Mr. Crispin Sparshatt!

Miss Beswick stood back slightly and waved an imperial hand to Mr. Sparshatt. "Perhaps you'd like to say a few words?" she suggested. To give him his due, he had obviously sensed the attitude of the class. "Not just now, thank you," he said. "There'll be plenty of time for talking on Wednesday afternoons at rehearsals." He couldn't possibly have known that he had just dropped a bomb bigger than any that had landed nearby in the last seven years. Wednesdays was our training day. The football team trained in the afternoons in winter, and in summer, as it was now, it was the turn of the cricket team to train. Those in the boxing team spent as much time in the gym on the top floor of the school as they could throughout the entire day on Wednesdays. It was also the day for the girl's netball team to practice though of course in a different part of the school. Under no circumstances were both sexes allowed to train in the same place and at the same time.

The school play was clearly a non-runner as far as we, the two top classes in the school, were concerned. But we had reckoned without Miss Beswick! A foolish omission. She had taken the school play idea to her heart and was prepared to sacrifice anything else to make it a success. The school timetable was revised to accommodate the introduction of the school play and the fifth and sixth forms were duly summoned to the main assembly hall the following Wednesday, all sports activity temporarily suspended.

Mr. Sparshatt arrived accompanied by Miss Bartlett, more bad news, she was both the deputy head and music teacher. Her presence usually guaranteed a piano recital of some sort and often required us to sing, something else the boys detested. On this occasion however the music was to take a different form. The play, one that none of us knew anything about and chosen presumably by Mr. Sparshatt, was "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespear.. He was arranging for some props to be delivered to the school soon and in the meanwhile Mr. Butcher the boy's woodwork teacher, Miss Parlour the art mistress and Miss Pollard who taught the girl's needlework, would organise those who were not chosen for parts in the play. Their job was to create and erect the appropriate scenery and period clothing. The latter to be made from brilliantly coloured cloths that he had brought with him.

He had won the girls over in one fell swoop, they had never seen cloth like it and the very thought of wearing the dresses he described sent them into an ecstasy of excitement. Needless to say the same thought had exactly the opposite effect on the boys. Our faces turned a deep red at the mere thought of wearing tights and suchlike and in seconds we were near to open rebellion. Still there were over forty of us and the play called for only a fraction of that number so most of us wouldn't be involved, our hopes rose and each of us began to devise ways of making sure that we were not picked for a part in the play. We each realised that if we were selected and appeared in the sort of costumes the play called for, we'd never live it down. It was at that moment the man came into the hall carrying a horse's head….A horse's head! He carried it across the hall in total silence and placed it in front of Mr. Sparshatt who gave it a cursory glance, "Thank you very much," he said, as if to receive a horse's head, even a stage horse's head, in the middle of the afternoon was a perfectly normal thing to happen, and waved the man away. For the rest of the afternoon we couldn't take our eyes off the thing lying in a corner of the stage. What on earth could he want with a horse's head?

The selection process was a nightmare. Mr. Sparshatt seemed to know we were trying to avoid being picked, and by even more devious means than we were employing to dodge the column, finally decided who would play whom. Somehow, despite an induced fit of coughing, a sore throat that would prevent me from speaking and sundry other declared ailments, Mr Sparshatt decided that I had just the right voice to "Do the Prologue. You will be brilliant, my dear," he assured me. There was no escape I was to be Quince and deliver the Prologue. The only saving grace as far as I could see was that I didn't appear until page twenty-five, by which time I would have had plenty of time to sman at the parts the harder cases in the class had been allocated.

To be fair Mr. Sparshatt was as good as his word. All the props arrived from various theatres, the scenery made by Mr. Butcher, his colleagues and his team was brilliant and transformed the stage into another world. The costumes were a triumph encouraging the girls to enter into the spirit of the play with such enthusiasm that some of it began to rub off on the boys, not that they would have admitted as much. They did perk up a little when they realised that at the end of the play there was a very good chance of the four couples at very least hugging each other. That didn't happen on the school premises very often and would certainly have been something special.

With just a week to go before the final dress rehearsal, exams completed and Thursday afternoons added to Wednesdays, Mr. Sparshatt declared himself pleased with progress so far. "You have all learned your lines," he told us with his customary fluttering of hands, "But you really must give more expression to the words." He then proceeded to act the part of the Duke and did so with such conviction that we all saw immediately what he was on about. As he rose from the tree trunk on which he had seated himself for the demonstration his attention was drawn to the far side of the hall. "Miss Beswick," he called out. "How kind of you to come to see us. The players are doing very nicely and I think we shall surprise you and your guests on the day." He smiled broadly and waved his hands to encompass 'His troupe' as he had been calling us for the past three weeks. We shifted our feet uncomfortably. We knew her better than he did. If she was in the hall, there was reason….

There was a reason! She walked across that hall sat herself down on the same tree trunk just vacated by Mr. Sparshatt and looking straight at me said. "I am the Duke. Proceed with the Prologue." I just stared at her. I couldn't say a word. Delivering the Prologue to Charlie Langham dressed as the Duke was one thing, doing the same to Miss Beswick…that's the stuff of nightmares! Mr. Sparshatt saved the day, he stepped forward and spoke the introductory lines of the play setting the scene for me to start. I swallowed hard, fixed my mind on the Duke and began.
"If we offend. It is with our goodwill that you should think we come not to offend. But with goodwill to show our simple skill. That is the true beginning of our end. Consider then, we come but in despight. We do not come as minding to content you, our true intent is all for your delight. We are not here that you should here repent you. The actors are at hand and by their show, You shall know all that you are like to know"

How did I do it? I don't know…I just did, and it was word perfect. Perhaps it was the opening comment "If we offend" ghastly thought! Perhaps it was the more hopeful "Our true intent is all for your delight." Whatever it was, the look on her face as I finished has stayed me with ever since. It was the only time anyone could remember seeing a genuine smile on her face. She was, in short, delighted. Mr. Sparshatt, too, was delighted and so was I. In fact I was so struck by the whole thing that I resolved there and then to enter the acting profession when I left school.

So, next time you are thinking about going to the theatre, consider visiting "The Globe" in summer. Yes you've guessed it I'm "Doing the Prologue".