Steyning Museum - Putting Steyning People on the Stage

From the Museum archives

Putting Steyning People on the Stage










A question: What have the Women's Institute, the Cricket Club, the Grammar School, Cuthman and Mrs. Beck got in common?

The answer: They, along with groups such as 'The Castle Players' and 'The Steyning Country Players' put on shows in the locality. Well, not Cuthman exactly - but there was a whole Festival in 1966 devoted to his story.

The earliest shows we know of were the fund raising events run by Steyning Cricket Club in the 1870's -  though there must have been others for which we have no records.The shows were in the form of concerts where they sang sentimental songs such as "Let me kiss him for his mother" and 'Pretty Little Dark Eyes' and they were often performed in costume.This was mostly in a form mirroring the minstrel groups in the southern States.  As such this involved 'blacking up' in a way which we would now find difficult but, with a Steyning concert group called 'The Patches', the tradition lingered on into the 20th century. 

At much the same time as 'The Patches' were performing Mrs. Beck was drilling a succession of small children to appear on the stage and sing for the people of Steyning. Photographs of these youngsters, some looking extremely grumpy, suggest that they didn't always perform willingly.  

But at the heart of Steyning's staged performances were the plays put on by enthusiastic amateur groups.There are too many to mention them all but the Museum is setting up an exhibition of costumes, photographs, programmes and posters in early October which will recall many of them. There are early photographs of the cast from a 1903 performance of The Mikado, which was staged by the 'The Steyning Amateur Operatic Society', in the Town Hall - and, with the passing of the years, more and more programmes and photographs have survived.  They tell a story of a moderately eclectic taste in Steyning's theatre going.  There were plenty of farces - one, in 1928 being performed by 'Pupils from the Convent of the Holy Sacrament' (The Towers) in St. Andrew's Hall.  Shakespeare, of course, featured largely, particularly in school productions - and other regular parts of the theatrical diet were romantic comedies and light opera, with Gilbert and Sullivan getting frequent airings. There were murder mysteries and thrillers and old favourites such as "The Importance of being Earnest" but serious drama only seems to have been attempted occasionally.

The schools - the Grammar School, the Secondary Modern and, later on, the Comprehensive - were a bit braver when it came to serious drama.  But school plays seem, from time to time, to have taken short cuts with their productions which would have caused 'Health and Safety' officials to have seizures.  One boy nearly did suffer one. Bare wires touching stage scaffolding led to Philip Hankin being hurled across the stage when he touched a metal radiator at the same time as the scaffolding.  It was also no doubt responsible for plunging the whole of Steyning into darkness when an incorrectly wired switch was thrown. Putting on a play during wartime blackout - with these hazards to contend with - was, apparently, particularly challenging.

Two Steyning men, Tommy Carr and his friend Jimmy, made it onto the stage by a completely different route. They applied to be contestants on the Carroll Levis Show, a radio talent show of the 1940's. The auditions were held in the Town Hall and Tommy and Jimmy were selected. To enormous local acclaim Tommy played his musical saw and Jimmy a lemonade bottle with holes drilled in it. Sadly Carroll Levis thought less of this than the local audience and they got no further. But it does serve to illustrate that there is more than one way of getting on to the stage.