‘A COUPLE OF LARKS’
This Guardian Newspaper Report may well show one of the very earliest productions staged by the newly formed After School Drama Club at Mark House. So whilst this early effort did not run off with first prize it does provide something of an ‘historical’ spot in the Drama Club’s production timeline – plus a first hint of of what was to come over the next twenty years or so with the adjudicator describing our entries as ‘A Couple of Larks’
The two plays were ‘Grand Partiality’ by William Cox and ‘The Fish’ by Yves Cabrol’
Little is known of either play although some internet information states that ‘Yves Cabrol’ was, in fact, the Non De Plume of TB Morris, an English Dramatist who wrote a number of stories in the 1950’s and 1960’s about the amusing side of French Village Life
‘The Fish’, takes place on a river bank on a summer evening somewhere in France and tells the story of how a miserable greengrocer and an extremely cheerful undertaker exchange businesses. Their wives are completely opposite, the greengrocer’s being gay and lighthearted and the other nagging and humourless. Yves Cabrol, the greengrocer, has a son, Louis, who has been making advances to Yvette and Celestine Plum, daughter of the undertaker, Pierre Plum – so perhaps giving a clue to what this particular ‘amusing side of French Village Life’ might be about.
Unfortunately the Guardian Report does not give any information about the MDC members involved in either of these production
The reasons for the MDC ‘s absence from the 1956 Essex Youth Drama Festival solved – AT LAST!
This further Newspaper article from the preceding week’s edition of the Guardian confirms the entries for the 1957 Drama Festival and, helpfully in terms of a small part of our history, the answer to the long sought question of why we did not enter the 1956 Festival – it was cancelled because of lack of entries.
