Margaret Catchpole 2012: Dressing-up Games

Penny is one of our loyal band of volunteers, and is also married to Roger who played an assortment of characters onstage as part of our Community Chorus. Here are Penny's memories of Margaret Catchpole:

Bentwaters Park and Slide - A Madge Memoir

May  The community chorus begins to evolve from a mixed bag of differently-gifted individuals to an all-singing, all-dancing troupe. Some are more musical than others, some have two left feet, but no matter - a rough bunch is what they are and WYSIWYG. Some are even allowed to talk.

June  The chorus start joint rehearsals with the professionals in earnest. Margaret mania begins to take hold as characters are fleshed out and ideas are introduced, tossed about, dropped or adopted. There is a real band. There is a music coach, a community chorus coach, a movement coach, assistant coaches: this train is longer than a freightliner. Over it all looms the Tall Director, the man with the plan.

It's Hush-Hush     Out to Bentwaters for the last few rehearsals and learning to negotiate the set: multi-tasking jetty/courtroom/ cottage/ inn and the grassy knoll/ beach/slippery slope, caster-down of humble and proud alike. Is that fellow really limping or is he just in character?  Acknowledgements to Ipswich A & E as mishaps multiply.

An influx of Angels   Opening night brings the first landfall of angels to perform their angelic tasks - ticket-tearing , ice-cream doling, car-parking, bar-tending, rubbish toilets, sorry rubbish and toilets. Too many angels are still not enough to answer the unanswerable, unlock the unopenable, and prevent each parking and passageway misdemeanour. By their jars of twinkly lights you shall know them, by the proffered programme and the baggy shirt.

Gala  This would have been a lovely day but for a mighty wind which made a nonsense of decking outside tables with checked table cloths and paper plates. However, Plan B ensured our guests enjoyed fizz and nibbles in comfort. A slight communications blip meant that some deserving friends missed out on the occasion, or felt they were ‘de trop'. Sadly this meant that some over-indulged in scones, jam and cream, while others were spared the horror of the Tall Director once again brandishing a very large knife while gesturing in full verbal flow.

Geography  Those big Suffolk skies flung down tankfuls of rain, and the great winds banged the shutters on top of the hush-house tunnel relentlessly. Mostly this happened at night , when only a (fool) hardy few remained in their encampment on site. Afternoon guests departed either into dazzling sunshine or banked clouds of wild white horses; at night the line of traffic vanished into a fast deepening sunset.

Agriculture   From dawn till dusk Margaret's beloved cycle of the farming seasons was marked by the mechanical clatter of the carrot grader, fed not by horse-drawn carts but by Polish tractor drivers pulling long trailers. A lone audience member, stranded on the hush-house forecourt until her family rescued her with a spare key for her accidentally locked car, was entertained by the workers practising their reversing skills round a slalom course of crates.

Farewell   As the ship finally sails for Australia, we salute the warm-up penguin for the last time. Goodbye to the spicy smell of the hot wagon, the manic semaphore of the ancient marine-woman on car park approach (she stoppeth one in three, but only if they stop first). Goodbye to the chuffing choughs on the camper roof. It was a time out of time: the Olympic Torch was passing through the neighbourhood outside the gates but which was the real world? The two events seemed at opposite ends of a telescope. Back in normal life a customer at a supermarket checkout scrambled after her dislodged brooch - "That's my Madge Badge! Did you see Margaret Catchpole?"  "No, but my friend's husband was in it". "Well, tell him it was wonderful".

Of course it was.

Penny Brookes