19 May 1943, John Charter's wartime journal

In those days I had a moustache and a beard and it meant shaving all this camouflage off, as I had to resemble, as nearly as possible, the fair Viola, which part was being played by Nora Witchell. She and I are exactly the same height and are both of the slender variety of build (thin in my case), but there the likeness stopped. In ‘A Marriage’ – I had to appear as a middle aged Edwardian and I intended to have at least side-whiskers and a moustache, and John thought a beard too, as it would then be easier to age me. So these two plays came just the wrong way round. I had to shave myself on Jan 6th and appear again with a rich and splendid fungus by Jan 14th. However, I decided I could manage the side-whiskers and moustache in that time.

‘Twelfth Night’ was the third play in Hong Kong for which I had proceeded with rehearsals. In neither of the earlier two had I appeared. I had dropped out of the first in 1940 because I was invited to go on the Inter-port Rugger Tour to Shanghai and ‘George and Margaret’ the second, had got to within one week of the ‘first night’ when the blitz out here started. So I became superstitious about this third play and said I was sure something would happen to prevent its presentation. Well, on Jan 4th Todd, who was taking the part of ‘Sir Toby’ fell during a game of football and tore a ligament in his knee! So the play had to be put off. However, it was presented and I did appear in my first play in Hong Kong.

Bill Colledge, the producer, took the part of Sir Toby and Cyril Brown took the part of Sebastian, formerly played by Bill. In the end the play was presented on Monday and Tuesday evening January 11th and 12th and a matinée on Monday. Bill and Cyril did very well (especially Bill) in their parts at such short notice. Bill’s arrangement of the play was very well done: he cut out various scenes without spoiling the plot or the continuity of the play and nowhere did he alter the text. I think it went down quite well.

The costumes were very well done. The Red Cross cardigans (of thick woollen khaki material) trimmed with reds, blues etc. and belted, made excellent doublets; and we wore blue or black shorts gathered at the knee and ladies stockings, for the lower portion of the mens’ garments. Daggers etc. were made in camp. Gordon Stopani-Thompson, as the Duke, managed to acquire a pair of satin pants which were stuffed with paper to give the right effect! The staging and stage sets were very simple and effective. My only criticism is that Bill is content with too low a standard of acting and his later productions have rather confirmed this view, in my opinion. It is not that he cannot get his plays more highly polished but that he seems to think “Oh that’s good enough”.

Owing to the alteration of dates, ‘Twelfth Night’ came right on top of ‘A Marriage Has Been Arranged’ and, with a break on Wednesday only, I performed on all the other 5 days. I had also to make do without a moustache, though I contrived side-whiskers. For ‘A Marriage’ I made up myself with water colour paints as there was no theatrical make up in camp, and it really proved a remarkably good medium to work with. Viv Garton made up most of the people for ‘Twelfth Night’ with the aid of an eye brow pencil, some rouge and face powder generously lent by some lady. He lined and coloured Nora and me in exactly the same way and I was quite surprised at the number of people who afterwards remarked on the resemblance between Nora and myself.

I must say I enjoyed ‘A Marriage Has Been Arranged’. It is a well written play to start with, though I found difficulty in reaching a satisfactory interpretation of Sutro’s character Harrison Cockstead. The character is that of a self made man of 42 years of age, the last 10 of which only have known wealth – and vast wealth – the former 32 years having been spent in savage and bitter poverty. In the action of the play, Cockstead says,  “I have no polish, or culture, nor taste, art wearies me, literature sends me to sleep”. And yet the words spoken by him in his part are undoubtably those of a cultured and well read man; a man, in fact, who has learnt and appreciates French. There is a certain amount of confusion, I think in the drawing of this character, but after a good deal of dissension we agreed on the interpretation we thought best and went ahead.

Sheila lives in this flat so, as there are only two of us, rehearsals were easy. My experience with John Roberston as a producer is that he forms a clear picture of the play and is generally quite clear and definite in his directing – which of course helps enormously. There had been some confusion somewhere and instead of being asked to put on a whole evening of plays we were asked, by the Entertainment Committee, to put on one play with two other dialogues. Both of these were dramatised versions of dialogue from Dorothy Parkers books, one produced by Richard Mills with Danny Wilson and Joan Dupuis, called ‘Here We Are’ and the other called ‘Fireworks after Dark’ with John Sterricker and Day Sage, produced by Mrs Graham-Barrow.

Both these were modern and very amusing, so our play was put in the middle of the programme. The setting for ours was the ante-room of a ballroom and by dint of borrowing some elegant silver candle sticks, a carved, velvet backed seated armchair that had been sent in to a Mrs Rowel from the American Embassy, by covering an old and dilapidated couch with some lace curtains and by concocting the inevitable aspidistra, we managed to produce quite an Edwardian atmosphere. We both wore evening dress. I think the evening as a whole went very well. Sheila and I both enjoyed doing our play and people were very generous in their praise. Several people let themselves be carried away to the extent of saying it was,  “Good enough for the London stage”. What internment will do to people.

I then had a rest while Yvonne got going. Carol Bateman produced a ballet taken from the book of Esther in the Bible. At least, she built a ballet on that story, composing all the dances herself. It was a tremendous undertaking. She started rehearsals on 4th Feb and it was presented on 19th March, and there were over 60 people in the cast. There were 13 men, but they were officers, chancellors and such and performed marches and actions to music rather than dances. Peggy Hunter was chosen as Esther and Goldie was the King. These two had done a lot of dancing together before the war with Goucharoff and had often appeared before the public. Peggy is really good.

Yvonne appeared in a very saucy slave dance, then in the virgins’ dance and finally in the lament of the Jews when they read the proclamation that Hayman has persuaded King Ahaquarus to make, condemning the Jews to death on a certain day.This dance, I thought, was beautifully conceived and very well executed and was the outstanding dance in the ballet: 17 or 18 girls took part in this dance. It was performed to a piece of music called ‘Bolada’ or a name very much like that and so, locally, the dance came to be called by that name. Dinnie Dodwell, another excellent dancer (though I don’t think she has done much actual ballet dancing) took the part of the discarded Queen. Isa Watson and Marjorie Fortescue appeared with four others as six lusty princes and they did two quite effective dances. Elsie Bidwell appeared as a court lady, though she did not dance. Yvonne really danced very well indeed, quite one of the best – and I was watching very critically! She and Sheila had to do a very quick change of costume between the slave dance and the virgins’ dance, so Winnie Deane (who had helped Y make her costume) gallantly stood by each night to help her change. Betty Drown arranged all the music and she and Roy Heasman (violin) played for the whole ballet.