A Music Hall entertainment.
A great big mash-up of songs, sketches and slideshow scenes and screens presented in patter by an OTT Master of Ceremonies...
The audience should be encouraged to dress the part — long dresses, hats, facial hair...
Pitch black.
Music plays: Grieg: "The Hall of the Mountain King"
- hear it here
As the music gets faster, new images flash up to the rhythm of the music.
The scene is being set — we are in and around WANDSWORTH COMMON.
We start with today:
- photographs of local street names, shop signs, the Common's most characteristic landmarks...
Slowly at first, then faster, faster...
- the pics flash past — it doesn't matter if the audience wants them to be left up longer — they will all be seen again later
Images from further back in time
- blue plaques, portraits, old maps...
Faster and faster, until...
CLIMAX!
Spotlight on the stage...
The MC is seen dressed in non-specific Victorian/Edwardian evening dress. Muttonchop whiskers. He stands near a pulpit-type rostrum beside the stage. Gavel. (qv Leonard Sachs in "The Good Old Days").
- perhaps other performers on stage
He/they lead the singing...
Music strikes up — "DAISY, DAISY" [aka "On a Bicycle Made for Two"] — music here — not a very good version, but OK for now.
- music is crucial. Pianist? Band?
Audience singalong: Words of "The Song of the Wandsworth Common Postcodes" are scrolled up:
[SW18]
Wandsworth Common, ess double-u eighteen
How we love you, your ponds and your pastures green
Your geese and your friendly canines
Let's not forget your trainlines
We love the Scope
We love the Hope
And ev'rything in between.
[SW11]
Wandsworth Common, ess double-u eleven
We all love you, your acres are made in heaven
Your pitches and children's playgrounds
Your jogging tracks to race round
Your toilets clean Your bowling green
And your tennis courts just for fun.
[SW17]
Wandsworth Common, ess double-u seventeen
Let's be honest, most of our bits aren't green
But you can't improve on Tooting
If what you need's commuting
We've got the shops
Our pubs are tops
We've also got Garratt Green.
[SW12]
Wandsworth Common, ess double-u twelve too
Though we're Balham, we claim a slice of you
The boundary's Thurleigh Road
The station's in our post code
We will admit
If it comes to it
That we better not claim Bellevue.
MC: Very brief intro in MC-type language, mingling geology/pre-history/fossils associated with Wandsworth Common. Most of these fossils were revealed when the railways were cut through the Common. Where possible, we will use Mantell's own words.
- Gideon Mantell — pioneering Geologist/Paleontologist who used Wandsworth and Clapham Commons for his popular educational walks.
- say/show that many of the early fossil hunters/collectors on WC were women (q.v. Mary Anning in Lyme Regis). Gideon Mantell names some of them: "Henrietta Wollaston, Mrs Potts, Miss Graham".
- ? rewrite lyrics of "I WALK THE LINE"
MC's speech ends "but chiefly yourselves...".
MC:
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to follow me back, back, back...
Back to a time when dinosaurs and mammoths and mighty molluscs ruled in Mesopotamia...
The land between the two great rivers. The very cradle of civilisation...
No, no, no. Not the Tigris and Euphrates.
Not those two tiny trickles.
Forget what you learnt in school.
I'm talking about the wondrous land between...
The Wandle and the awesome ...
Falcon Brook.
(The latter now sadly languishing in a pipe beneath Northcote Road...But I get ahead of myself...)
Pics e.g. map of SW London before London, a profile of Wandsworth Common between two valleys]
"The Falcon Brook sliced through these hills like a cheesewire ...
...to create Britain's answer to the Grand Canyon...
Nappy Valley!
MC:
"Now let me introduce you to some old fossils..."
Fossils dance on: ammonites, dinosaurs, mammoths.
They sing "The Mes'potamian Rag" :
Let's go back in history
Delve into this mystery
Wandsworth Common tell us more
And dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur
We've gone back to the cretaceous
To a time before the glaciers
And thanks to Doctor Mantell
There's much more than we can tell
Do the Mes'potamian Rag...
What about the Carboniferous?
Weren't the fossils quite splendiferous?
A Victorian palaeontologist
Had an old tooth on his bucket list
What is this? A mammoth molar?
Sabre-toothed or is it polar?
Two four six eight
Time for us to excavate
So let's dig in history
Delve into this mystery
Wandsworth Common tell us more
And dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur
Navvies dug to Clapham Junction
Digging down without compunction
Oh look a fossil
Isn't it colossal?
Thanks to the Wandle it's
There for us to fondle let's
Do the Mes'potamian Rag!
MC wears mortar-board, board-pointer...
Pre-history ends and history starts. These "historical" stories could be done a la Horrible Histories or 1066 and All That. A quickfire history of natural and social history up to the start of the 19th century (with slides).
- Gravel...
- Gorse, heather, trees ...
- Ponds and lakes...
Charles I gives Allfarthing Manor (with a large chunk of Wandsworth Common) to Endymion Porter [grant a/infanta?)]
Sir Walter St John introduced — he was given a large part of Battersea (with a large chunk of Wandsworth Common). [Hence the local grammar school of that name. Their family emblem the falcon — hence all the falcons (pub, road, brook etc) around and about...]
Audience sing (to the tune of "My old man said follow the van... ):
King Chas One
Said I'll have some fun
And give bits of Wandsworth to my friends
I'll give a bit to Endymion Porter
And there'll be some for his friend Sir Walter
(Is that Sir Walter St John or Sir John St Walter?)
Sad to say his school's not there today
It's been closed down just like poor Clapham County
Yes the past has passed away.
[Industry in the Wandle Valley. (Snuff Mill?) Bolingbroke and Lady Diana Spencer? Walter St John's descendant Bolingbroke — known as "Bully" at Eton and thoroughly disreputable. Would make a good story. And he eventually sold his Battersea estate to Viscount Spencer...]
- Aristocratic picnics...
- Duels...
- Highwaymen...
- Sheep...
Sheep?
Yes, sheep. We'll come to them later.
etc...
MC:
At the beginning of the 19th century if you were a lord with a lot of loot and a lot of land then improvement was the name of the game...
And this is where our story really starts...
Here's William Cowper:
"Improvement too, the idol of the age.
The lake in front becomes a lawn
Woods vanish, hills subside and valleys rise
And streams, as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand . . . .
Even as he bids."
The lord did not only improve his own land, he stole common land and improved that too.
Here's John Clare:
"Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave."
MC:
We all like a villain to hiss and a hero to cheer, don't we Commoners? And Wandsworth Common has its very own villain."
Indeed, a long line of them. And they're all called...
Earl Spencer!
[Earl Spencer sings — based on Gilbert & Sullivan: "I am the very model..." here, here, or here.]
I am the very model of a wealthy English gentleman
I buy up land that really should by rights belong to everyone
I sell it off for railways and patriotic schools for girls
There's one law for the rest of you and one law for the Spencer earls
You must agree that Wandsworth cannot have too many gravel pits
And speculators will bring jobs and...
Lots of other benefits
They'll build new villas, modern prisons, dead straight roads, a cemet'ry
And on what's left Lord Burlington
Will drill the local infantry.
I am the very model of a nineteenth century landowner
I fence in land that should belong to ev'ry Wandsworth commoner
And when I am opposed in court by men like Mister Buckmaster
You can be sure that I will bring my very own solicitor
My fellows in the House of Lords will muddy ev'ry argument
We'll speechify until we win — that's why it's called a Parliament
We'll plead we're benefactors of the nation's orphaned boys and girls
There's one law for the rest of you and one law for the Spencer earls.
I am the very model of a property developer
Suburban villas are erected with the least expenditure
Round Wandsworth Common I squeeze in as many streets as possible
Where bank clerks and their wives reside with relatives innum'rable
There's Bolingbroke and Mallinson and Honeywell and Nightingale
And Ravenslea and Baskerville and Bennerley and Herondale
And Wexford, Jaggard, Althorp, Wiseton, Bellevue, Sandgate, Trinity And Frewin, Loxley, Burcote, Routh . . .
It goes on to infinity...
There's Nicosia and Henderson and Collamore — and what a lark!
I know I'll name one after me — I'm going to call it Spencer Park!
It will remind posterity that I've been good to orphaned girls
There's one law for the rest of you and one law for the Spencer earls.
MC:
But Wandsworth Common also has its very own hero... John Buckmaster.
[This is the centre of the story. There's so much to put in. We have lots of notes and ideas, based on his autobiography, A Village Politician. Much of the language is terrific and should be included: "Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be".
Possible scenes to show include:
— the visit of two Gravel-diggers / Potato planters to see John Buckmaster one evening
- the poor dupe "Wrigsby", one of the few copyholders in Wandsworth who could challenge Spencer in court
- Down with the Fences! Physical force! A young man, Sulling, breaks down a fence enclosing part of the Common — he is sent to prison — and returns as a popular hero.
8 JUNE 2020: NICK'S DRAFT OF THIS SCENE IS HERE (WORD DOC).
[NP: I have been playing with the idea of a song set to Mozart's Horn Concerto, in the manner of Flanders and Swann. I would be happy to drop this but have enjoyed trying to make it work.]
They fenced off our footpaths and tried to prevent us
From grazing our ponies, our cows and our sheep
They even grubbed up our few rows of potatoes
The pockets of Wandsworth's proprietors are deep
To stop their game, we had to win over the magistrate
To stop their game, was a hell of a difficult task.
These gentlemen cheat
And they will defeat
Yes they will defeat us if they can.
Oh, we'll all end up in the clink
Before we manage so much as a blink
But then I thought a bit I must admit
It was a most brilliant idea I had to cheer — I would find a copyholder.
Well, where to find this gent? He appeared, yes he really did, heaven sent.
How did I get to this gent?
With some gin.
With some gin
And tobacco the poor chap was lured in.
Who was this bloke?
One Wrigsby by name
And to my shame
Knowing I needed a witness to win in the court case. . .
Lightning kills 7 on Wandsworth Common — 4 of them children. The tragedy is reported in the popular press, and even in scientific journals, around the world.
"Lightning Flashes Death Message"
Thunder — lightning — silhouette of the Windmill — screams — cries...
MC:
And now, ladies and gentlemen, for some lambent luminosity and periculous pyrotechnics, tinged with tragedy and tears...
Nineteen hundred and fourteen is a dark year, not only for Wandsworth Common but for the whole of His Britannic Majesty's Empire on which the sun never sets.
It is the 14th of June, just two weeks before an even greater cataclysm is visited on the world hundreds of miles away in Sarajevo.
"A great black cloud hangs like a pall over Wandsworth Common..."
[We could use the words of the People's Journal, both in voice-over and as silent film captions, with tableaux vivants lit by the lightning flashes.
Some of the language is amazing: Loved Ones Felled Sweet Hearts Perish The War of the Elements Followed his sweetheart across the bourne. etc]
Background info, images, cuttings: Great Storm.]
MC: But this local conflagration is a forerunner of what is to follow in just a few weeks...
The screams — cries — thunder — lighting flashes of the previus story...
... turn into the sounds of cannon on the Front... the cries of men — the injured are brought back to Wandsworth...
...to the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, which has been turned into the 3rd London General Hospital...
MC:
The Kaiser is at first reluctant to unleash aerial bombardment on his cousin George's capital city; but in May nineteen hundred and fifteen the first Zeppelins loom over London.
One is shot down close to the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, which has been turned into the 3rd London General Hospital...
SONG: Bombed last night...
Bombed last night,
Bombed the night before
Gonna get bombed tonight
if we never get bombed any more.
When we're bombed, we're scared as we can be.
Oh God damn the bombin' planes from Germany.
They're over us, they're over us,
One shell-hole for the four of us
Glory be to God there are no more of us
'Cause one of us could fill it all alone.
That's it, Folks — for the moment. More to come...
We're just mad about Wandsworth
Wandsworth's mad about us
We're just mad about Wandsworth
Wandsworth's mad about us
They call us Yummy Mummies
(Quite rightly)
They call us Yummy Mummies
(Quite rightly)
They call us Yummy Mummies
We're just mad about the Common
The Common's mad about us
We're just mad about the Common
The Common's mad about us
They call us Yummy Mummies
(Quite rightly)
They call us Yummy Mummies
(Quite rightly)
They call us Yummy Mummies
We're just mad about the Skylark
The Skylark's mad about us
We're just mad about the Skylark
The Skylark's mad about us
They serve dishes for babies
(Quite rightly)
They serve delicious coffee
(Quite rightly)
They serve it on the terrace
(Quite rightly)
They'll host your celebration
(Quite rightly)
It's a unique location . . . . . . .
Dogs are fine If they toe the line
And their owners all read the signs
Hey you, pick up the poo
Who's the red bin for if not for you?
Walking the dog
I'm just a walking the dog
If you don't know how to do it
I'll show you how to walk the dog
C'mon now c'mon
If you're an owner with any sense
You won't let your dog jump a fence
He don't respond,
he's in the pond
Might even injure the nesting swans
Walking the dog
I'm just a walking the dog
If you don't know how to do it
I'll show you how to walk the dog
C'mon now c'mon [i.e. "Common...Common"]
He's just a pup, he doesn't bite
You can stroke him if you like
Who's mummy's favourite boy?
Walkies with him is such a joy
Walking the dog
I'm just a walking the dog
If you don't know how to do it
I'll show you how to walk the dog
C'mon now. c'mon.
There's plenty to do in the open air
There's lots of space for us all to share
And it's well known that exercise is calming
There's fitness groups, touch rugby, bowls
There's cycling and there's fish in shoals
Nobody could be bored on Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Co-o-o-o-mon.
The natural world's abundant here
It's full of life that we hold dear
There's insects, fungi, wildflowers and fauna There's mosses, lichen, birds of prey
There's geese and ducks.
In every way
We must be thankful for our lovely Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Common
Wandsworth Co-o-o-o-mon.
It's great — Music Hall, Oh What a Lovely War, G&S, Flanders & Swan melange, what's not to like?
I think framing it in the Music Hall context is spot on, absolutely our period, The Master of Ceremonies can carry the day, and nothing better for audience engagement — elements of the pantomime but offering greater range. I mentioned before my family's connection with the Players' Theatre. As programme girl there we had pink song sheets printed up with the lyrics for that week, and also the regular choruses like 'Cherries so red... ' and 'Oh the fairies... ': could we do similar for our musical (and we can charge for the programmes). We also used to have ads on the song sheets, can't remember if these were actual or spoof, but there's a thought (maybe in Music Hall style?).
There was also lots of lovely persiflage from the Chairman, along the lines of 'Gentlemen you may now remove your outer garments, Ladies you may remove any article of clothing commensurate with the retention of TASTE!'. First draft shows there's a rich seam which you are already enjoying mining — glad to see 'This time, chiefly, YOURSELVES!' — an old friend, traditionally followed at the Players by 'Oh the fairies... ' . However, not convinced that the voice of the MC is the same as the narrator's voice? Maybe this is just shorthand at the moment...
The Players theatre was 'Underneath the Arches' in Villiers Street, and the trains thundered audibly overhead to Charing Cross, leading the Chairman to bellow 'to hell with the London, Chatham and Dover railway — Sleepers AWAKE!' (crash of gavel, and rousing audience rendition of the next chorus) — maybe this bit of business could be worked in as a nod to our railways on the Common?
Love the Major General and Daisy Daisy (glad Balham gets a look in) and My Old Man is a fabulous tune and good concept with a bit of work. The Flanders and Swan mention in particular got me thinking which other of their lyrics might be adaptable eg
- A Transport of Delight — we've talked a lot about the railways, but what about the red buses which still patrol the perimeters: swap 'London Omnibus' for 'Clapham Omnibus' and you have a rousing anthem which could be minimally tweaked to be relevant today o We like to ride in convoys We're most gregarioUS It's worth it just to ride inside that thirty foot long by ten foot wide inside that Monarch of the Road Observer of the highway code that big six wheeler scarlet painted London Transport diesel engine ninety-seven horse power OMNIBUS!
- Design for Living — a skit on gentrification, the original is v 1950's/60s (?) but could be fun to update and send up different eras including our own? o We're terribly house and garden Now at last we've got the chance The garden's full of furniture And the house is full of plants...
- And dare one suggest the Hippopotamus, which might have felt at home on the Common in certain seasons, although perhaps not cutting the mustard with Valerie on the indigenous species front:: o Mud, mud, glorious mud Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood So follow me follow Down to the hollow And there let us wallow In glorious mud
Goodness me, feeling very nostalgic — I really enjoyed reading the treatment last night, and dashed out the above. In the cold light of morning it's very much a stream of consciousness, but wanted to respond while the ideas and enthusiasm were flowing. Unless I send it now, I can see it will distract me all day, and I have to get serious for a bit!
Thanks for all the imaginative graft to date, and I much look forward to seeing how it all develops,
Sue
A slightly different way of starting the show:
Pitch black
Music — The Hall of the Mountain King — starts
For a few seconds nothing happens
A torchlight appears, perhaps at the back of the auditorium
The light/the character moves
The character appears to be looking for something
Other characters emerge, their torches also looking
No words are spoken
At the finale of the music the characters are all on the stage
They introduce themselves as among the people we the audience will be introduced to this evening
Characters in search of recognition of some sort
The speak about themselves — perhaps a few couplets
Where are we?
Wandsworth Common!
"If we hadn't existed, you (the audience) would not be here now...
There would be no Wandsworth Common"