Haywards Heath Operatic Society

Half a Sixpence

28^th Oct - 1^st Nov 2003

Director - Rebecca Dowden

Musical Director - Ian White

Choreographer - Beth Bryant

Gentlemen

Children

Ladies

(By arrangement with "The Really Useful Group Ltd")

Rebecca Dowden's revival of David Heneker's Half a Sixpence for Haywards Heath Operatic Society, found the show's true value in its roots - the H.G.Wells novel, Kipps.

Usually itentified as the 'Flash, bang, wallop' musical (that's the title of its big production number) and the capering pop star of yesteryear, Tommy Steele, who created the central role, it tends to be classified as a kind of Edwardian Me and my Girl.

Rightly Dowden highlighted Wells' social themes and despite the song and dance sequences and a catchy score, the piece emerged more as a musical play with a good deal to say about human nature as well as the corrosive influence of the class system of England in the 1900s, as it drifted towards two world wars.

Of course the show only delves lightly into the novel but its themes were apparent in this spirited revival which was not afraid to have its downbeat moments.

We were in Folkestone where the difference between not having £1,200 a year and having it was being treated like a slave and sleeping in your employer's cellar, or living like a gent in your own house with wife and servant.

David Tettersell, an imposing figure with the look of Sir Edward Elgar, personified the autocratic employers; the ruling blue-bloods were admirably chinless; and Mathew Ingram's young Sid the socialist, transparently bolshie. It was too early for Michael Howard still to come as part of Folkestone's political folklore dispensing his own kind of flash bang wallop.

The real tragic figure was Helen Walsingham, the posh gal who goes to Cambridge and falls for Kipps. Sympathetically played here by Vicky Rogers, she's too up-market to marry Kipps and take him properly in hand.

His girlfriend Ann though, whom he subsequently marries, feels she's not good enough for him after he's come into money. It's a pity Helen, a vital part of the social triangle, doesn`t have a number.  Ann has - I Know What I Am - and Sally-Ann Bates in the part was a feisty sparrow.

Sound the trumpets for Stephen Hall who made an auspicious deput with the company as a confident Kipps. Here was a leading man who can act and spearhead the company in big rousers. He really caught the mood of the show when acting with the voice in She's Too Far Above Me.

John Godwin's old thespian, Chitterlow was a disarmingly bibulous theatrical benefactor drawn on Sir Toby Lines, an old pro straight out of Trelawny of the Wells. Martin O'Hara and Anthony Chesterfield were well in the picture as Kipps' dependable friends, and an impressive chorus seemed equally at home with the score, brightly played by the resourceful band conducted by Ian White, as they were with Beth Bryant's exuberant choreography.

More a shilling than half a sixpence I`d say.

Mark Gale

Registered Charity Number: 800597