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  • Home
  • Productions
    • Future Productions
    • Popular Playwrights
  • Archive
    • 2020- >
      • Funny Money
      • Jekyll & Hyde
      • Ladies Down Under
      • The Last Quiz Night On Earth
      • Underground
    • 2010-19 >
      • 1 Flat 3 Stories
      • Abandonment
      • Animal Farm
      • Carrington VC
      • A Christmas Carol
      • The Country Wife
      • Crown Matrimonial
      • Easy Virtue
      • Fawlty Towers 2013
      • Fawlty Towers 2015
      • Feed the Beast
      • FlatSpin
      • Hello, Is There Any Body There?
      • The Hollow
      • Ladies Day
      • A Lady Mislaid
      • La Musica & Perfect Partners
      • Love In A Mist
      • Maskerade
      • Misfits
      • Much Ado About Nothing
      • Nobody's Perfect
      • NSFW
      • The Railway Children
      • Salt
      • Sauce For The Goose
      • Six Characters In Search Of An Author
      • This Happy Breed
      • The Thrill of Love
      • Visiting Hour
      • A Wedding Story
      • Wind in the Willows Chelsfield
      • Wind in the Willows Edinburgh
    • 2000-09 >
      • Arsenic and Old Lace
      • Black Comedy
      • Cemetery Club
      • A Chorus Of Disapproval
      • Daisy Pulls It Off
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Fear and Fancy
      • Garden
      • A Ghost On Tiptoe
      • Hobsons Choice
      • House
      • The Importance of Being Earnest
      • Intimate Exchanges
      • Lady Windermeres Fan
      • Loot
      • Lucky Sods
      • Mars & Venus
      • The Merry Wives Of Windsor
      • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
      • Murder In Company
      • My Three Angels
      • New Directions
      • Over My Dead Body
      • Our Country’s Good
      • Out Of Focus
      • Party Piece
      • Proscenophobia
      • Ring Round The Moon
      • The Rivals
      • Steel Magnolias
      • Stepping Out
      • Strictly Murder
    • 1990-99 >
      • Bedroom Farce
      • Blithe Spirit
      • California Suite
      • Deadly Nightcap
      • Dial M For Murder
      • Dick Turpin
      • Gosforths Fete
      • Hay Fever
      • An Inspector Calls
      • The Late Edwina Black
      • Lord Arthur Saviles Crime
      • Miranda
      • Move Over Mrs Markham
      • Not Now, Darling
      • Pleasures And Perils
      • Round And Round The Garden
      • Seasons Greetings
      • Some Confusions
      • Something To Hide
      • Tartuffe
      • Time And Time Again 1993
      • Time And Time Again 1999
      • Time, Murderer, Please
      • Tons Of Money
      • The Weekend
      • When One Door Closes
      • The Woman In White
    • 1980-89 >
      • Anastasia
      • The Barretts Of Wimpole Street
      • The Brontes
      • Busybody
      • Caught Napping
      • A Friend Indeed
      • Full Treatment
      • Gaslight
      • Mother Goose
      • Murder In Company
      • Nightmare
      • Outside Edge
      • Pink String And Sealing Wax
      • Pygmalion
      • Rape Of The Belt
      • Relative Values
      • Return To Victoria
      • Separate Tables
      • Shut Your Eyes and Think of England
      • Suddenly at Home
      • A Tomb With A View
      • Treasure Hunt
      • When We Are Married
    • 1970-79 >
      • The Aspern Papers
      • Brush With A Body
      • The Chiltern Hundreds
      • The Circle
      • Dandy Dick
      • Dear Charles
      • Fish Out Of Water
      • The House Of Bernada Alba
      • The House On The Cliff
      • An Ideal Husband
      • Ladies In Retirement
      • A Letter From The General
      • The Matchmaker
      • The Rivals
      • The Royal Pardon
      • The Schoolmistress
      • Shadow In The Sun
      • Someone Waiting
      • Spiders Web
      • They Came To A City
      • Wanted: One Body
    • 1960-69 >
      • 1066 And All That
      • Aladdin
      • Antigone and The Critic
      • As You Like It
      • Billy Liar
      • The Bread Winner
      • Breath Of Spring
      • Charleys Aunt
      • A Christmas Carol
      • Cinderella 1965
      • Dick Whittington
      • Flowering Cherry
      • Frost At Midnight
      • Hay Fever
      • The Hollow
      • The House By The Lake
      • Macbeth
      • Man Alive
      • The Merchant Of Venice
      • Midsummer Mink
      • A Midsummer Nights Dream
      • Pantomime 1960
      • The Pen of My Aunt, The Women Have Their Way
      • The Pleasure Garden
      • Pygmalion
      • Rookery Nook
      • The Taming Of The Shrew
      • Tobias and the Angel
      • Twelfth Night
      • Waters Of The Moon
      • The Young Elizabeth
    • 1950-59 >
      • After October
      • The Browning Version, Elegant Edward
      • By Candlelight
      • Count Your Blessings
      • Eden End
      • Grand National Night
      • The Happy Prisoner
      • The Holly And The Ivy
      • The Late Christopher Bean
      • Libel
      • Martine
      • The Queen and the Rebels
      • Thunder Rock
      • Young Wives Tale
    • 1936-49 >
      • Early 1940s plays
      • 20th Century Lullaby
      • And So To Bed
      • Berkeley Square
      • Cinderella
      • The Corn Is Green
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Distinguished Gathering
      • Duet For Two Hands
      • Elegant Edward (1940s)
      • The Ghost Train
      • Hassan
      • The Importance Of Being Earnest
      • Love From A Stranger
      • The Middle Watch
      • New 66 And All That
      • Night Must Fall
      • Noah
      • Pinocchio
      • The Rivals
      • Roberts Wife
      • This Happy Breed
    • Our History
  • Join Us
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Hassan

by James Elroy Flecker, produced by Eric Hart
Picture1910 Ordnance Survey map showing Woodlands and Chelsfield House (now Chelsfield Park Hospital)
21-22 July 1939, Cannock School
Rummaging through the Chelsfield Players archives unearths a show that was performed barely weeks before the outbreak of World War 2. Hassan is a tale of medieval Baghdad, shot through the lens of the Arabian Nights and celebrating an exotic view of the Middle East considered quaint today but alluring at the time. This production appears nowhere in the official archives, but it definitely happened as the photos and reviews prove.

Again, the producer (i.e. director) was Eric Hart. We don’t have a cast list but we can glean some roles from the review:
Caliph Haroun al Raschid     Vernon St Clair Tomalin
Hassan     Colin George
Pervaneh     Dorothy ‘Bunty’ Orme
Rafi     Eric Hart
Selim     Gordon Cameron
Yasmin     Gladys Hollands

Hassan was the Society’s first open-air production, performed at “Woodlands” in the grounds of Cannock School (now Browns School), which had an amphitheatre.

It appears to be the amateur premiere of a play written 25 years before with a cast, according to later records, of 100 performers plus a small orchestra in only the Society’s fourth performance, demonstrating that the idea of amateur theatre had properly grabbed the local imagination in a very short time. The reviewer described it as “a real triumph” and “a fine show”, with the hope of “many more to follow”.

He got his wish: there have been over 200 productions so far.

Newspaper Review
The long anticipated production of Flecker’s “Hassan” took place as arranged in the beautiful setting of “Woodlands,” Chelsfield, on July 21st and 22nd, although there were fears of a postponement on account of bad weather. On Friday afternoon there was a thunderstorm accompanied by tropical rain; but the weather cleared as if by magic before the play began, and the courage of the producers was rewarded by a large attendance, including many people from a distance.
 
“Hassan” had never before been produced in the open air nor performed by any amateur society in its entirety. No acting edition of the play has been published. Accordingly Mr. Hart had to rely entirely on his own dramatic and artistic instincts in adapting the play for an open-air production, and he achieved a real triumph in spite of many great practical difficulties, such as the necessity to carry the electric current from Chelsfield House, half a mile away.
 
The incidental music specially composed for “Hassan” by Delius was impossible to obtain, much of it being in manuscript and not orchestrated to suit a small orchestra. Mr Wood thereupon set to and composed and orchestrated almost the whole of the music which was used so effectively.
 
As for “Hassan” itself the vast concourse of players carried us back so realistically to the streets of old Bagdad, and to the court of that sadistic monster the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid (V. St. C. Tomalin), that after the death dance around Rafi (Eric Hart) and Pervaneh his lover (Bunty Orme) it was a welcome relief to hear the strains of “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” But for that – so completely did we share the contrasting emotions of that great souled confectioner Hassan (grandly portrayed by Colin George) – most of us would surely have joined with him the caravan to Samarkand.
 
We shall not forget that slow procession through the night, nor the moving voice and gestures of Selim (Gordon Cameron), nor Gee Hollands’ perfect artistry as Yasmin, nor the glamorous scene in the King of the Beggars hall.
 
To all the hundred players and to those out of the limelight who did so much for the success of the play by making costumes and properties, we say “Thank you for a fine show and may there be many more to follow.”
Picture
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