Sunday, 5th October 1975
(Winder House, Sedbergh School. Age 14).
I saw Salad Days, the musical, performed by the staff in Powell Hall. We were all there in formal Sunday wear, boys and masters watching boys and masters perform for one another. It was a very school affair.
A few boys were helping backstage as apprentices, doing the lights and literally learning the ropes.
Adam Applegarth, who was in my year, played Jane. They could not get a master’s daughter to do it, and Adam had pretty legs and a good singing voice, so he had to wear a tennis skirt and girls’ clothes. He was not in my House, so whatever teasing there was afterwards did not really involve me. I had already been a lady-in-waiting in a prep-school production myself and had thought the whole business a bit silly.
Despite that, I thought Salad Days was very good. They could sing.
The musical had been written in 1954, and looking back it fitted Sedbergh rather too well: a school still embedded in the past and apparently unable to see much beyond the 1950s. Everyone seemed terribly pleased with themselves. There was something almost incestuous about it all — like children putting on a show in the sitting room for their parents and neighbours, except on a much bigger scale.
Performance interested me a lot, though.
But what did I know?
Leave a Reply