Free Notes from the Stage Manager's Box by John Barber Page A

to use. The result was a 2-2 draw and by the time I had found my mates in the crowd I had missed two goals.
     
    However it was worth missing this for the joy of standing on a float surrounded by all manner of fruit and vegetables with about a dozen or more of Club members. We were required to dress in authentic eighteenth century costumes so had to have a fitting the previous week. It was quite eerie walking around the City of London in period costume amidst buildings that were constructed about t he same time and very few other people about in modern dress.
     
    Once we got going on the float we were asked by the police not to throw rotten tomatoes or peeled bananas at the crowds lining the streets as it could lead to some minor accidents. This is not quite true but we were asked not to hand out all the free food we were carrying and I don’t know what happened to it.
     
    But it was fun. Along the route people were hanging out of top floor windows waving and smiling and offering u s a pint which was unfair because we weren’t allowed drink either . We had a marching band in front of us and a company of Ghurkhas behind us. So we were quite safe.
     
    I apologise for this digression but the essence of what I was saying was that I was tired and needed a rest. Along with the shows which I had helped organise with the sometimes begrudging acceptance of departmental and Office Managers I also had a career to worry about and a hectic social life along with one or two girlfriends that expected me to spare some time with them away from Spurs and the various City of London hostelries.
     
    I was still a committee member and produced the programme and posters for Hello Dolly. I wrote a short piece on Hello Dolly and a quick look back at what the Club had achieved.
     
    I found these notes in a 1968 Westminster Theatre Club production of Funny Girl at the Scala Theatre:
     
    Those frantic dress rehearsals went badly and the old cliché ‘it will be all right on the night’ could only be greeted with a sickly smile. That anguished cry of ‘I’ll never do another show again’ which was conveniently forgotten when the speaker bounced back for the next production, apparently unscathed. The long moments before the overture struck up and excitement surged through the company. And of course that terrible empty feeling the day after when there was no more show until the next time.
     
    Just for once when I said I’d not do another show I meant it but having a break was good for me and I returned for No No Nanette.
     
    Having reviewed the past five or six years the experience of Fiddler on the Roof and then Calamity had opened my eyes to the logistics of setting up a show, the production process. I enjoyed starting with an idea, a blank piece of paper, an empty stage and watching it build up. John Hebden was the kind of director who gave me all the encouragement to discover and explore this and Roy Follett the kind of man who tells me that we haven’t got the money to be so ambitious. The key was to strike a balance.
     
    I think it was John Hebden who suggested No No Nanette to the committee. It was well suited to our company, a few leading roles and plenty of work for the chorus as well as some cameo parts.
     
    In the notes from the programme I quoted from a review by Patrick Ludlow writing about the first showing of No No Nanette in 1925. This is an amended copy:
     
    If you wanted to give a party in the middle twenties you couldn’t do better than take them first to see No No Nanette at the Palace Theatre and then on to the Café de Paris for supper. With Nanette it didn’t matter whether your guests were ‘bright young things’ or ‘stuffed shirts’ the signature tune was ‘I want to be happy’ – and that’s the way everyone left the theatre. Joseph Coyne and George Grossmith in the two main parts put across the message ‘this is all tommy rot but oh boy, isn’t it fun’. They were aided and abetted by a