Wellesbourne in World War II

At the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the village of Wellesbourne - just a few miles to the north-east of Stratford-upon-Avon - seemed an insignificant village. But by the end of 1940 it was very much at the centre of things. Rumours flew around that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a secret hideaway for himself, and his cabinet, just outside the village, and that he - or his official look-alike - had been seen in the vicinity several times. We also know the Royal Family had bolt holes in the area, and probably still do.

In 1940 a large RAF base was built, becoming one of many bases for the Royal Canadian Air Force, from which they flew the British twin-engine Wellington bombers - designed by Barnes Wallis - as part of their 6th Bomber Group. By 1941 post Dunkirk remnants of the Polish, French, Belgian, and Czech armies where also camped in the area, training to become an integral part of the British Army.

In late 1942 the American Army moved in, but not as a unified force, it was an army of two halves: Black and White.

In the words of that most popular of American military historians, Stephen E. Ambrose, “…the world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated Army.” He went on, “… It was worse than that: the Army and…society conspired to degrade African-Americans in every way possible, summed up in the name Jim Crow.”

A popular World War II cartoon strip, The Sad Sack, personified the average GI as a “… naïve, confused, lazy, bumbling private.” In reality a “sad sack” was a miserable so-and -so, and the worst “sad sack” of all, according to the strip, was a Jim Crow.

From 1942, until late in 1944, the US Army would not allow a black man to belong to a front line fighting unit (even though black units had fought bravely in the Civil War on the Unionist side, and in the trenches of the First World War), instead being relegated to service units where they either worked in field kitchens, waited on table in the officers mess, or drove supply trucks.

The term “Jim Crow” itself derives from the first white minstrel, Thomas Dartmouth, known on stage as “Daddy Rice”, who blacked his face with burned cork, and did a song and dance routine that always ended with him becoming the old crippled Negro slave Jim Crow, who shuffled about the stage like a wounded bird, singing his lament for lost agility and freedom:

Weel about,
And turn about, and do jis so.
Eb’ry time I weel about,
I jump Jim Crow, I jump Jim Crow.

Dartmouth was soon known as Ol’ Jim Crow, and became, during the anti-bellum period of the 1840s and 1850s, hugely popular across America and Europe. For generations afterward the black American was stuck with the Jim Crow image.

Read the rest of this entry »

At the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

December 30, 2006

Gregory Doran is the Cecil B.DeMille of theatre, the great theatrical showman, the director with the golden touch, a thesp who knows how to turn the all too familiar into something new and spectacular. And in this wonderfully re-tuned show Doran has taken the bones of the story, and, with the music of Paul Englishby, the lyrics of Ranjit Bolt, turned the whole thing into a singing and dancing extravaganza that delights at every ridiculous twist and turn of Shakespeare’s plot. I loved it.

And that’s about it when it comes to Doran’s work - you either love it or hate it. But what is there to hate?

But the purists often do, as if the Doran touch somehow cheapens Shakespeare, makes fun of the Bard and his hallowed words. Rubbish! Doran brings Shakespeare to life - back to life even, as he must have been in those dangerous, glorious days of the Globe - in a way that Bill himself might have recognised and applauded. Gregory Doran has somehow plugged into the man, might even be the man. The second coming perhaps?

Two or three years ago Doran created something wonderfully moving with his puppet interpretation of Venus & Adonis that was, for a while, the best the RSC had come up with in quite a long time, even with real actors. He did it again with his hilarious production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which took the lid off that, until then, dreadfully unfunny play, re-inventing it so that it not only made the critics of the Times, and The Guardian (Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph was already a hopeless case by then) laugh uncontrollably in the aisles, but also made this most peculiar of plays penetrable and understandable. Most recently - the winter of 2005/2006 I think - he took Geoffrey Chaucer by the scruff of his neck and his scrotum, and turned The Canterbury Tales into a brave and hugely funny (and I mean funny) show that lasted over six hours that seemed like six minutes. And in both Dream and Tales Doran used puppets again to mesmerising effect. There are no holds barred when Doran gets his hands on a play - if it works leave it in.

And that was obviously the order-of-the-day with Wives too. One can imagine Doran lining-up Dame Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Alistair McGowan, Haydn Gwynne, Jeffery Dench (Dame Judi’s brother), and the rest of ‘em, like a sergeant major before a battle and explaining that attack - in comedy as in warfare - is the best, the only, sort of defence. That once the enemy are on the run, or in this case, the audience are screaming with laughter (then applauding at the oh-so-very-wonderfully-over-the-top singing and dancing) don’t ever look back toward your own trenches but keep on going forward until the audience is conquered completely and utterly, and begging for mercy, or, as we did at the end, for more!

Doran doesn’t really leave you time to think (you can do that on the way home, or in the restaurant over a glass or two of wine and a good steak), but instead wants you to become an integral part of the production (as you might in a pantomime where you desperately want to shout out ‘behind you’) and expound as much energy and sweat in the watching and listening as the actors do in the performance; and Doran makes you do that. It’s the least you can do really.

But Merry Wives: The Musical is not a pantomime, but a well thought out piece of musical theatre that at the start deliberately uses the obvious build-up to a song as a way of warming-up the audience, who then take each succeeding song (and Ranjit Bolt’s songs are very good, which you’d expect from the nephew of playwright Robert Bolt) much more easily for what they are, namely a means of pushing forward the plot. Only when the audience have become used to that device (which is an old and well tested device anyway) does the energetic and wonderfully ironic (yes, ironic) choreography of Michael Ashcroft come into play. And does he play!

The whole show borrows from anyone and everyone, and in Ashcroft’s dance, and Englishby’s score, we have a mix that takes in everything from The Chocolate Soldier, via The Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis, to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Rocky Horror Show. It’s just so wonderfully, breathlessly, eclectic; but done with a superb skill that only the RSC can do when it’s really motoring. If anyone remembers the RSC production of The Begger’s Opera of the early 1990s you’ll know what I mean.

Dame Judi Dench, as Mistress Quickly, is seriously funny - she also sings as if she’s just about keeping up, which is a skilful, twinkle-in-the-eye touch - as is Simon Callow’s thoughtful and beautifully timed Sir John Falstaff. And Callow’s deep baritone voice is a lovely musical instrument that lived up handsomely to the promise it made in the street that day a few weeks back.

Alistaire McGowan’s Frank Ford is a delight of paranoid comedy, and his singing and dancing skills are an absolute revelation. God, the hours that must have gone into it all is quite mind boggling.

It’s good to see Haydn Gwynne back with the RSC, with her portrayal of Mistress Page quite extraordinary, with her versatility abounding in both song and dance. Oh, and Simon Trinder, as Abraham Slender, is an utter delight, and a star in the making.

I’ll tell you something. It’s worth going to see this show just to see Dame Judi somersault her way across the stage after one particularly energetic dance routine. She does, honest.

Merry Wives: The Musical runs at the RST Main House until February 10th 2007.

For tickets go to the RSC site.