A PASSIONATE WOMAN Director Maggie Reeve and Stage manager John Smith discllss their production for The Chipstead Players

INTRODUCTION

I h~d re~d the script and I found it a challen ging and w ell -written play I gw e a very brief description to the tuge Manager and he agreed to stage it without knowing exactly WIUlt he had let himself in for

The action of the play takes place in the loft of a suburban house on the sons wedding day The story is about his mother who goes into tillt loft to get away from the fu ss where she meets the ghost of her previous lover It is a sentimental and revealing story flnd culminiltes when she climbs out of the skylight and on to the roof (At this point the set revolves showing the sloping tiled roof and the chimneys) There is fast and furious action with the son slipping and coming to res t on a very insecure gutter He is spirited back to the apex of the roof by the action of Craze the ghost and the climax is the appearance of a firemans ladder to try and get the mother down but before this can happen she transfers to a hot air balloon and sails away

In reviewing our production the strong-on-arts Croydon Advertiser headlinEd it a Coup de Theatre and explained that the womans part called for incredible endurance by the actress never off the stage thats if you can call a set centred on a firemans ladder loft outer roof and a hot air balloon i

stage For this indeed was a production with truly lofty ambitions

CASTING

For the pivotal role of Betty we had Maggie May a fifty-something veteran with the range to show a woman in that mid-life crisis otherwise known as Fledgling Flies the Nest Syndrome Her part demanded a subtle blend of bittershysweet humour and romantic longing tor lost love - all revealed as she took refuge in the attic on the morning of her sons wedding As her son Mark we had Mike Strong to project the understandable impatience bafflement and ultimate compassion towards Betty and we had another experienced hand as the dullish initially scorned husband who attempts some white knightery of his own The ghost has to be a semi-ghost

but invisible to her family who knew little of this so-called Craze Bettys Teddy-boy era lover

COSTUME

Because the roof was grey I dressed the men in black tailcoats to prevent them merging with the set For Mark this spelt trouble Disaster threatened when the coat tails were caught in the mechanism winding him up to the roof top The coat was dragged and trapped until he came to a halt just out of reach of Craze and too low to reach the skylight window Eventually Mark wriggled out of his coat which remained stuck to the roof for the rest of the act and Im proud to say the dialogue continued unbroken - if not quite as scripted

A challenge was finding the right Teddy Boy wear for Craze To introduce some colour into the set we selected a pink jacket black

soled shoes Mind you the pinkness made it more difficult to conceal him as he waits for Betty to pick him up in his entrance into the ballroom scene but as the audience were concentrating on her they were very surprised to see him

Bettys smart suit had a fairly straight skirt and with her extra dress and petticoat on top it was quite bulky So during the interval she took the skirt off making it easier for her to move around the roof

SETTING 61 PROPS

Shortly after deciding on the play we saw the touring company in Bromley In the car on the way home we wondered if we could obtain the set as this was their last production Two days later after a number of phone calls we had bought the entire set and it was to

following Saturday We had fI

appreCiated that it would arrive a 45 ft articula ted truck and tha we would need to close off SOlT

roads in our village - but someh the driver backed it into our entrance

Horror of horrors We had m realised tha t the touring set wa

built upon a steelwork frame ( t

now know that it weighed abo ut shytons in total) and it too k us the be part of a day to unload it and put away

Seven months later we started Ilt put it up Now if we had realis we were going to buy it our Stag Manager would ha ve gone to th get-out at Bromley - but he didnt and we were faced with the large jig-saw puzzle ever seen Aft r trial and error we eventually fOlmd the correct order for assembly and at this stage realised just how luck we were to be able to get this set onto our small stage It entail d removing all of the flying and building out the front of the stag over the front row of seats Thi was achieved by extending the false floor which we needed tlt place under the revolve otherwise the sheer weight of the set would have caused irreparable damage t(l our floor

When we revolved it for the first time we were again lucky in that a

it passed below the proscenium arch it cleared it by about one inch The firemans ladder took up a large amount of space but luckily the wings on stage left lead directly into our workshop and scene dock The ladder arm is counterbalanced and the whole thing runs on a ra i track The son Mark rides onto the set in the cage which is about 12 ft above the floor Pur actor was scared of heights but he did it without a murmur - he was probably too frightened to speak

gtFrom stage right we flew in a hot air balloon and basket The flying of this basket was a task in itself When we built our theatre the structural engineer placed the steelwork in the grid 25 metres apart not knowing that the standard stage pitch was 2 metres The flying gear which weighed 250 Kg needed to have a special steel truss to support it I think that the husband Donald who was in the basket was too busy working the

visible to Maggie and the audience trousers boot-lace tie and crepe- be delivered to our theatre the gas and smoke controls to worry

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about the height But that was nothing I He had to transfer from the balloon basket to the roof and Uen transfer to the fireman s lift before Betty climbs into the basket to tll away to her dreams

PROBLEMS

15 the set only just fi tted our stage 112 had sevend restrictions Craze could not stand upright whils t he was on the ridge of the roof as the back rmv couldnt see his head We devised moves to look natural and keep him in view TIle re wasnt sufficient room in the wings to raise the balloon before it ltppeared so it lurched onto the s tage at ground l ~vel before rising and floating )Cross the roof top The audience delighted just to see it didnt seem to notice Also during this it was impossible to keep our stge crew hidden at all times We needed a large stage crew and we were unable to maintain the same number for all six performances One night the crew m ember in charge of tying off the rope to check vlarks fall down the roof overlooked the need for accuracy and failed to tie it off exactly at the mark Result Mark overshot the gutter cilusing some extra drama in the front row

REHEA~

We started our rehearsals in our rehearsal room and in trying to convey the movements to the cast it was very humorous to see them jumping from chair to chair pretending that they were on a roof We had difficulty in conveying to the cast how the set would be since we had neither drawings nor photographs but they accepted it and our stage manager gave us the set to work on with five weeks to go before the first night

When we got on to the set we discovered that the acting area was a lot smaller than that which we had been using for rehearsing This was mainly due to the sloping roof of the house cutting the loft floor in half and with the usual clutter to be found in most family lofts we had to re-plot some sections When it came to acting on the outside the sloping roof looked so realistic it gave the impression you were really about to fall off a house There were plenty of hand-holds but to get the cast to forget the height took a lot of patience and jf wed had a video camera I am sure we could have made a killing of Youve Been Framed

LlCiHTINCi iii SOUND

SlJ1Ce we had by necess ity to remove all the flying we also had to clear numbers one and two lighting bars of all the lights and introduce a sharks tooth scrim ceiling That meant that they could only light the set from the front and very careful positioning and levels were necessary to avoid shadows especially when the Ktors were standing on the apex of the roof some 14 ft above the stage floor

Sound had a very important job to do although not as complicated as some of our previous productions it did call for some unusual effects Have you ever tried to record the effect of a gramophone record with a sticking needle We fowd that using two mini-discs for the cued effects and a CD for the sound of the g[lS for the balloon worked very satisfactorily

More than most productions we approached this with heightened feelings about the technical challenge of mounting what by any standards was a production of astonishing daring and complexity But what the staging mustnt be allowed to do is to overwhelm the human scale of the drama We believe we accomplished this balancing act

As The Advertiser put it There can be few plays where the stage directions for the closing scene read Hot air balloon basket to drift across roof top from stage right whilst the top of the fire brigade

stage left The Chipstead Players have tried quite a few adventurous productions at their Courtyard Theatre but A PASSIONATE WOMAN scales the heights almost unimagined in amateur theatre It was fabulous theatre wonderful direction by Maggie Reeve an incredible set and props beyond wildest imagination We and our supporters are still talking about it

THE NEXT TIME

The same set will be used by The Trinity Players who are presenting this play in Tunbridge Wells Since they only have one day for the getshyin four members of The Chipstead Players stage crew will be helping them in order to avoid the pitfalls they encountered

Heald Green Theatre Company presented the amateur premiere of

this year (reviewed by Irene Rostron ill Ollr Jllne 98 issue) Withollt the benefit of the original set they had to approach the design problems from scratch

SET DESICiN

The set for this play presents quite a challenge to an amateur stage crew (and the cast) and because of the gymnastics required from the cast it was essential that it was available early for rehearsals The script offers some suggestions for simpliJied amateur staging but we felt that something nearer the original design would be an advantage Our stage is not large shy20 ft pros arch and 21 ft depth from tabs to cyclorama - but it is 3 ft above floor level and we did have a trap door in it so the entrances and exits from below were easy Essential things were a revolve

Lighting had a unique problem ladder and platform rises from A PASSIONATE WOMAN earlier which we havent got a firemans

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