Creatively: A Memoir of Plays, Films, Musicals, Commentaries, and Books

By Jeff Hopkins

This is a memoir from the point of view of a working-class boy from East Fremantle, in Western Australia who, in his formative and teenage years, had a love of the theatre and performing. Later he went on to script and produce films. Then there are eleven original musicals involving both writing and performance, some under very ‘odd’ circumstances. Along the journey, he developed skills as a sporting commentator. Finally, in retirement, he embarked on writing thirteen novels, three ‘factional’ biographies, a memoir, and a revised edition of his family’s genealogy.

How this all came about, and the significant people who shared the journey, is documented, and the back stories behind the various endeavours are detailed. There are ‘lost years’, some triumphs and disasters, and a few very sad times, but above all, it is a reminiscence about a life lived creatively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922628640

Jeff Hopkins

Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Walyalup, Western Australia. Walyalup which means 'lungs' is the Whadjuk name for Fremantle, and is part of the Noongar Nation. As the drama master at Hale School in Perth, he wrote ten original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school.In 1992, he researched and wrote a family history, 'Life's Race Well Run', and after retiring in 2006 he has written twenty novels, a memoir, and three 'faction' biographies.

Book preview

Chapter 1: At Primary School

1956–1962

‘Seventy summers were hived in him like old honey’. It is a quotation from a Judith Wright poem ‘South of My Days’ of which I have always been fond. Having attained my ‘seventy summers’, I have decided to write a memoir. As so many of my books contain autobiographical elements disguised in the stories of other people, I have decided against a full-blown life story. This is going to be about a creative journey that is now ‘hived’ in me. Throughout the journey you, as the reader, will meet many people of all ages and backgrounds, but one person will become a recurring motif. It is my friend of sixty-six years, Michael O’Halloran. We met in primary school and shared theatrical and film adventures. Although for the past forty years we have lived on opposite sides of the continent of Australia, we have never been far apart. Indeed, he has always been there. Even today he reads and reviews my latest novels and encourages me to keep writing. Michael and I met for the first time at the East Fremantle Primary School. I have no real memories of Grades One and Two. I just assume that Michael and I started in Grade One with Mrs. Jeffreys as our teacher and we proceeded to Grade Two with a female teacher who is now, sadly, lost in the mists of time. The convention in autobiography is to start with your earliest memory, but as this is a creative journey about plays, films, commentaries, musicals, and books, I thought it should start with my first theatrical memory.

Grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Carr’s, classroom was in the north-western corner of the East Fremantle Primary School’s second block of classrooms on the Forrest Street side. These days that classroom block is now the number one location incorporating the Administration part of the school, with the Junior primary classrooms having been moved to the Marmion Street side. Mrs. Carr’s classroom opened out onto the school assembly hall. I see it once every few years, as it is the location for the polling booths when State and Federal elections are held. The hall has a stage now, but in 1958 when I was in Mrs. Carr’s Grade Three class there was no stage. So, when we ventured out into the hall area to conduct drama activities the floor was flat.

Mrs. Carr selected the story of ‘The Little Red Engine that Could’ as our performance for the end of the year parents’ presentation. I was cast as the little red engine and my mother made me a set of red trousers and a jacket that I think she sewed from a pyjama pattern. Decked out in red, it was my role to show the little red engine’s mighty battle to get up the steep incline. Of course, the performance area was flat, so this interpretation was not all that simple. I still remember the oft repeated line of dialogue that delineated the struggle for the little red engine:

‘I think I can, I think I can!’

I have no recollection of how the rest of the presentation played out, but as it is my first theatrical memory it will have to do as the start of this memoir.

After Grade Three, Michael and I graduated to the buildings on the Marmion Street side and entered Mr. Hall’s Grade Four classroom. I have no memory of any theatrical performances in that year, 1959. Perhaps Mr. Hall was not inclined to thespian activities. So, in looking for a form of creative expression. I stumbled into Val Heston’s Dancing School at the Tamar Street Hall in Palmyra. I had been taken along to a dancing concert where my cousin, Lee Willis, danced beautifully, and I told my mother and father that I would like to try that. Surprisingly, they agreed, and I started living the ‘Billy Elliott’ story long before the movie and the stage show were even thought of. Each Saturday morning, I would catch the bus along Marmion Street and get off at Petra Street and walk to the Tamar Street Hall were the classes were held. I was no ballet dancer like Billy Elliott, but I took to tap dancing and at the end of 1959 took the examination for the bronze medal and got it! It is the only medal I have ever received for anything!

Val Heston staged a dancing concert at the end of each year and in 1959 it was held in the Fremantle Town Hall. Back stage that night I got my first taste of the musty smells in Community Town Halls. There were to be many more in the future. I danced a tap-dance routine to the Debbie Reynolds’ song ‘Tammy’, and again for the first time, got my initial taste of applause. Applause has become my reward of choice ever since. I did not continue dancing after that first year. The reason was simple. My father spent a lot of money buying a Beale Patent upright piano and I started piano lessons for the first time in 1960 with Sonya Tschaplin in Silas Street.

In 1960, I passed into Grade 5 and was taught by Mr. Robert Tucker. Michael was missing. His father, ‘Mick’ was a Western Australian Government Railways’ (W.A.G.R) train driver and he had been transferred to Norseman and the family went with him. Michael attended Norseman Primary School for the whole year. I think you would describe Mr. Tucker’s teaching style as informal and loose. Perhaps he was before his time, but it is more likely that he was not well organised or driven by his curriculum responsi­bilities. This had its downside from an academic point of view, but it did open a lot of opportunities for creative imagination. It was in Grade Five that I wrote my first play, ‘Kindness Pays’. Sadly, no manuscript exists today, so apart from the suggestion of the title I cannot remember what it was about. Mr. Tucker allowed it to be performed in front of the class and I remember encouraging other members of the class to join me in the presentation. My 1960 final year report has an addendum at the bottom of the page where Mr. Tucker had written in the heading ‘Writing Plays’ and the comment: ‘This is an endeavour to which Jeffrey devotes a lot of his time, sometimes at the expense of other activities’. It was to prove to be a prophetic statement indeed!

Mr. Tucker’s contribution to the end of the year Parents’ Night concert was a nativity play, where I was given the task of narrating. I remember wearing a schoolboy’s double breasted grey melange suit with short pants for my role. Parents’ Night presentations were performed on a temporary stage set up at the western end of the Marmion Street buildings. An array of forty-four-gallon drums were covered with a segmented portable dance floor and flood lights illuminated the area. It was primitive now that I think about it, but we thought it was just great at the time.

Then in 1961 I took my place in Gwen Dunkley’s combined Grade 6 and 7 class. I would have Miss Dunkley for two years. In 1962, it was a straight Grade 7 class and those two years set the stage for my rapid rise in the world of theatricals and laid the groundwork for another pursuit in later life, which we will get to when appropriate. As I recall the events of 1961 and 1962, it is sixty years since they occurred, so it is difficult to get all things in perspective. Miss Dunkley had a profound effect on me. She sharpened my appetite for the theatre and performance, and she paved the way for my first ever commentary stint and started an adventure that would last most of my adult life. So, who was this woman?

Miss Dunkley was petite. She was short in stature, but powerful in her hold over her upper primary charges. She smoked. Her classroom was regimented and followed a strict pattern, which helped me quite a lot. To say I had been loose in my attitude to being educated, in the first five years of primary school, would be an understatement. Miss Dunkley straightened that out and it made me a much better student. Secretly, I think I was probably frightened by her, or at very least, in awe of her. Miss Dunkley was strict, and she wielded the cane freely to keep discipline in her classes.

However, it was her love of the classics and her ability to read them aloud to us in the class, that captured my attention. They came alive and live so vividly in my memory. She read us Charles Dickens and I am sure my lifelong love of that author started in her classes. Towards the end of 1961 she read us ‘A Christmas Carol’ and then announced we would be doing a dramatised version of the story as our class play for the Parents’ Night concert. Looking back, I now realise Miss Dunkley was ‘workshopping’ the story and letting us develop the play through that process. She cast Rhonda Bennett as Ebenezer Scrooge, so she was an equal opportunity director with no qualms about not sticking to the correct genders in the story. I was given the part of Freddy, Scrooge’s nephew who is upbeat about Christmas and comes to invite the old miser to his home for Christmas dinner. He is roundly rebuffed with the famous line ‘Christmas, bah, humbug’. The play was staged on the forty-four-gallon drum and portable dance floor construction as mentioned earlier and was well received.

My friend, Michael, also recalls his role in ‘A Christmas Carol’. He played one of the ghosts of Christmas, clad in a white sheet. Indeed, he quotes the story and Tiny Tim in particular, every year when he sends out his original, computer generated and printed out Christmas cards.

Around this time my father sold the old Chevrolet 6 which had stood unused in the gable-roofed garage for years. Once it left, I saw the potential, in that space, for a theatre and proceeded to create a proscenium arch stage screened with hessian at the eastern end and a roll up canvas blind for a curtain. A tiered seating arrangement covered with an army surplus tent was at the western end. We staged J.M.R. (Jeffrey, Michael, and Robert) shows for the neighbourhood kids. The Robert in the J.M.R. shows was Robert Renton. His story will be coming up in detail later in this memoir. This began a trend for performance, where I would have half an idea and worked it up with no sense of how it would develop into a whole presentation. It was a fault in my planning that would remain with me for a long time. A half-baked idea, with no thought as to how it might be developed into something more substantial. I do remember sketches involving a couple called ‘Hustle and Bustle’ and a character called ‘Muscovite Man’ who had a rocket ship made from an old bath heater. It was a lot of nonsense really, but the local kids came and were entertained.

In 1962, amazingly, Miss Dunkley turned to George Bernard Shaw, and we worked on a dramatised version of ‘Passion, Poison and Petrification’, which is subtitled ‘The Fatal Gazogene: A Brief Tragedy for Barns and Booths’. I was given the role of Adolphus Bastable. It is a comic mock melodrama and we performed it in the John Curtin High School Hall. It was my first taste of acting in that space, and it was not going to be the last!

From the Original Programme Notes

Plot of ‘Poison, Passion and Petrification’

‘Late at night, Phyllis, the maid, is combing the hair of her employer, Lady Magnesia FitzTollemache. Phyllis expresses foreboding and the fear that she will never see her beloved mistress again. Magnesia retires to sleep, serenaded by a heavenly choir singing ‘Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey’. A murderous figure enters, brandishing a dagger. Before he can stab Magnesia, she wakes and recognises her husband. Her admirer, Adolphus, demands admittance so that he can show her his new suit of evening clothes, made of bright yellow and black cloth with a red waistcoat.

FitzTollemache offers Adolphus a whiskey and soda. The gazogene (soda siphon) contains poison and Adolphus is soon writhing on the floor. Magnesia declares that with Adolphus dead she will have to devote all her energies to doting on her husband. Finding this prospect overwhelming, FitzTollemache reveals that there is an antidote to the poison, namely lime, which they can get from the plaster of the ceiling. They throw boots up to bring pieces of the ceiling down. Adolphus cannot force the plaster down his throat and instead Magnesia reaches for a plaster bust of herself, which she bids Phyllis to dissolve in hot water. Adolphus drinks the mixture and with the poison neutralised he sinks into a deep sleep.

The FitzTollemache’s landlord appears, complaining at the noise from the room. He believes that the recumbent Adolphus is dead, accuses the others of murdering him and summons the police. The Constable cannot arouse Adolphus, and discovers that the plaster has set inside him, turning him into living statue. A Doctor arrives, as a violent storm breaks. Lightning fatally strikes the Doctor, the Policeman, and the landlord. The FitzTollemaches raise the statue upright and kneel before it, as a heavenly choir sings ‘Bill Bailey’. The statue raises its hands in benediction and the band plays the national anthem.’

I cannot leave Miss Dunkley without referring to her nurturing me as an announcer and sports day commentator. I really cannot recall how all this came about. It started when I was in Grade Six and I was given the task at the School Athletics Carnival at East Fremantle Oval of going to the boundary and announcing results through a megaphone. It was not a very satisfactory system. So, the next year in 1962 Miss Dunkley, who did all the recording of the results, arranged for a genuine public address system to be set up. In my second year as announcer and commentator, I stood beside her at her recording table and read the results as she pointed to each line I was to read. When the microphone was off, she would advise me on how to better present the information next time. It was my first tutorial in broadcasting school sports, which would grow exponentially as the years rolled on. An amusing aside came from my Auntie Jean who lived in Fortescue Street a block away from the Oval. She paused in her baking to listen to the voice she could hear quite clearly and recognised it as me! She later told my mother the story. Neither my mother nor my father was at the Athletics Carnival and did not hear my embryonic steps into the world of broadcasting. How it developed will be reported on at a later stage.

Chapter 2: At Secondary School

1963–1967

No one knew it at the time, but we were about to embark on the most creative period of our lives, so far, when we entered secondary school in 1963. John Curtin Senior High School, which had been built on a wasteland of limestone rock and the old Skinner Street cemetery site was opened in 1956. By 1963 it was bulging at the seams with enrolments. As a result, the first-year intake, in that year, were sent off to Princess May and Fremantle Boys’ School bounded by Adelaide, Cantonment and Parry Streets in Fremantle. The Fremantle Boys part of the site was virtually derelict and so it was the Princess May building that became our educational home for twelve months.

Our cloistered little world at the East Fremantle Primary School suddenly expanded as students from Richmond and Bicton Primary feeder schools joined us at Princess May. Some could still walk to school, others had to catch buses down Canning Highway and Queen Victoria Street to get to school, but most of us rode our ‘boneshaker’ bikes to start our time at John Curtin High School. For the second time only in our lives, Michael and I were in different classes, after he had spent Grade Five at Norseman Primary School. This time at Princess May, I was allocated to 1A and just down the hall, Michael was in 1B.

Also, in 1B was Rodney O’Byrne, a boy from Fortescue Street and Richmond Primary School. Rodney would later turn up in my fourth novel ‘The Spiv’ under another name. However, that is for the future. Rodney persuaded Michael to join him at the Young Australia League (Y.A.L.). Each year the Y.A.L. rehearsed and performed an all-boys’ revue and then took it on tour in the August school holidays, to country towns in the south-west, great southern and north-eastern areas of the state. The boys were billeted out to families in those towns and performed their show nightly. Michael auditioned for and was given the part of Stella James. It was a female impersonation role. The Director was Danny Cuthbert. At the same time, J. C. Williamsons were preparing to stage a production of ‘The King and I’ at the Capitol Theatre in Perth. Williamsons contacted Danny Cuthbert and asked him if any of the boys in his Y.A.L. troupe might be suitable for the part of Louis Leonowens in the show. Danny encouraged Michael to audition for the part and he got it.

The first we knew of all of this was when Michael turned up to Princess May with his jet-black hair dyed red. Well, it was more of an orange colour. All was revealed and explained. Later Michael’s mother, Stella and he turned up at our front door and explained that J. C. Williamsons wanted a second boy to share the part of Louis Leonowens. They asked if I would be interested in auditioning.

My mother took me to the Capitol Theatre, and we did the audition. I did not get the part! Evidently, I was too tall for another boy player, Jeff Phillips. I was devastated and on the sad journey on the bus home I determined I would never be involved in the theatre again. As you read on in this memoir you will find that these ‘never again’ pronouncements appear rather too regularly and are often followed by a sustained commitment to the very thing I was so determined to eschew. I made the decision soon after to switch to making films as a creative outlet. This was one of many ‘spur of the moment’ decisions that was never fully thought out and had no clear pathway forward. You will find a few of these along the journey as well. The decision was odd as I didn’t even have a movie camera, and had no previous experience at writing, producing, filming, editing, and presenting a film. At the time that didn’t really seem to matter.

To raise the funds to get my first camera, I took on an afternoon paper round and while Michael was touring with the Y.A.L., I was delivering the ‘Daily News’ in and around the local district. The savings grew ever so slowly. In first year, high school, the creative landscape was barren. Our English teacher was an old-school ma’am, Clarrie Stringer, whose concession to drama was to have students read from playbooks at the front of the classroom. There was no end of year concert or plays and the only glimpse of creativity came once a week in the last lesson of Friday afternoon when Miss Thomas took 1A for what was loosely termed ‘Art of Speech’. It was a highlight. Miss Thomas instituted mock trials and debates and moved the desks from their strictly regimented rows into groups for exciting interactive discussion work.

In 1964, we all moved up the hill to the actual John Curtin Senior High School. Michael and Rodney continued at the Y.A.L. for a second year in the all-boy revue and toured once more in the August holidays. I continued to deliver papers and edged ever closer to that first movie camera. Now at the main school we heard and saw for the first-time Maureen Francis Ardagh, and her various associate producers and directors stage the annual school musical. Our lives lit up as we saw productions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘The Gondoliers’ and ‘The Vagabond King’, a musical written by Brian Hooker and composed by Rudolf Friml. The seed was planted, and we couldn’t wait to get our chance to grace the stage in whatever Miss Ardagh decided to stage next.

Towards the end of 1964, my mother announced she was going to take me to the eastern states by train during the summer holidays that year. That decision prompted my father to step in and help me buy my first movie camera to record the trip. It was a Hanimex crank action standard eight-millimetre camera that took sixteen-millimetre film which was split into standard eight-millimetre film during processing. So, the adventure began. Initially I photographed everything, and some of that footage is still extant fifty-five years on. However, it was stories I wanted to tell on film and in 1964, I started writing basic scripts. One of the earliest was a convict tale set around the historical Round House in Fremantle. In 1982, it would morph into a musical play at Hale School, but we are getting ahead of ourselves again.

In 1965, we entered our Junior Certificate year at John Curtin and Michael, and I were reunited in 3A. Rodney O’Byrne had left John Curtin to attended Wesley College during 1964. Michael asked me if I would like to come to the Y.A.L. and audition for a part in the 1965 all-boy revue. I went. The idea was that I would audition for the part of Charles Peterson, the henpecked husband of Cecily Peterson. We travelled by bus on that Sunday morning up to Y.A.L. headquarters in Pier Street in Perth and Danny Cuthbert conducted the auditions. At the end of the day, I came away with the part of Aunt Cecily Peterson and now Michael and I were both doing female impersonation, in drag, as he continued in the role of Stella James for the third year in a row. Rodney O’Byrne, who was still at the Y.A.L. was to play my husband, Charles.

We rehearsed throughout Term Two of a three-term year, catching the bus each Sunday morning, and travelling to the Perth headquarters of the Y.A.L. In the week before the start of the August holidays we did a full-dress rehearsal for parents and friends. Then we were issued with our travelling uniforms which looked a little like navy blue police uniforms with a similar black and white police cap. I was particularly pleased with that uniform, which fitted me like a glove. On the first Saturday of the August school holidays 1965, we boarded the old Metro bus driven by League Director, Jack Cotterill, and headed into the south-west of Western Australia to begin a fifteen-day tour.

From the Original Programme Notes

Synopsis of the Bright Musical Revue:

‘Look Out Folks Here We Come’

George Mason dies, leaving behind three avaricious relatives and £100,000. There is a condition in his Will that quickly erases all feelings of sorrow in the hearts of his heirs. In the reading of the Will, George’s solicitor Jason, P. Ashby, is instructed to distribute the entire estate to a charity of his own choice within six months.

Far from letting this happen to the money they consider to be rightfully theirs, the three disillusioned heirs, (Charles and Cecily Peterson and their niece, Stella James) agree to form a bogus charity, namely the ‘Stella James Home for Derelict Children’. The neighbourhood urchins are given the chance of three meals a day and a place to sleep, which they accept in good faith. However, Cecily and Charles are not all they have appeared to be and after trying to help themselves to the funds it looks like the ‘Home’ idea will fall through.

The kids discover what is going on and beg Stella not to leave them. They stage a revue to raise funds and keep the ‘Home’. Paul Ashby and his uncle, Jason, P Ashby, are convinced of Stella’s sincerity and the money from George’s estate is given to Stella to continue the ‘Home’.

In 1965, the touring party went to the south-west of Western Australia. Our first stop was Waroona. We went to our host family billets while the stage crew travelling in the truck driven by John Moss ‘bumped in’ to the local community hall. That night we performed our travelling show to the people of Waroona. In the morning after breakfast at our host family billets, we returned to the hall where all our gear was placed in the truck and those travelling on the bus did a morning parade in our uniforms. This pattern continued as we went from country town to country town. In order, we went to Brunswick Junction, Harvey, Boyanup, Balingup, Donnybrook, Boyup Brook, Bridgetown, Manjimup, Pemberton, Margaret River, Nannup, and Capel.

Some of these towns really stood out. In Donnybrook Jack Cotterill gave us a stern morning parade lecture on the evils of engaging with the ‘pickle factory’ girls in the town. It caused a nasty reaction, but not many of us understood the implication of ‘pickle factory’ girls. In Manjimup, we did a Friday night show in that town’s magnificent new Community Hall facility. It was an eye opener. The weekend was spent in Pemberton, which meant a two-night stay with our billeting family. Danny Cuthbert approached me and asked if I would be billeted with a boy who was having a tough time on the tour and no-one else wanted to be placed with him. Reluctantly, I said ‘yes’ and I learnt an important lesson about having empathy with others. We were billeted on a beautiful farming property and the lad, who I will not name, and I walked and talked around that farm on that Saturday and Sunday, and I think we both benefited from the experience. I still rate the performance I gave as Cecily Peterson in the old wooden Pemberton Hall as one of the best I ever did. Perhaps, looking after someone else for a change made the difference? At the end of each performance the company would sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’. This was years before it became the official national anthem and so when the change did occur, I had no trouble singing the words.

After the 1965 Y.A.L. tour was complete I thought it was time to cash in on the ideas of the ‘Bright Musical Revue’ and so at the end of that year I made two films both entitled ‘The Other Generation’ I will refer to them as Parts One and Two. Part One saw Cecily and Charles Peterson (with myself as Cecily and Michael as Charles) encountering a young garage band, and Part Two, a much better developed piece saw Cecily and Charles back with a romantic couple, played by Noel Cressie and Carol Gothard, and involved a rather dubious body disposal in the Swan River. There was no written script they were just workshopped films that in retrospect were amateurish and lame affairs.

In 1966 Maureen Ardagh announced that the John Curtin Senior High School musical in that year would be Dennis Arundel’s revised version of Edmund German’s ‘Merrie England’. Miss Ardagh had persuaded another member of staff, Trevor Myers to direct. Michael and I were keen to participate. After the auditions, I secured the part of Walter Wilkins, a Shakespearean actor and Michael was cast as Silas Simpkins my fellow performer of the Bard’s works. What a hoot and what a learning experience! I watched fascinated as all aspects of the production were pieced together. The Manual Arts department, under the direction of Dick Anderson built the sets, and Jack Cox from the Art department painted the scenery and Miss Ardagh taught the vast cast all the songs. Trevor Myers felt his way through his directional role, but mostly we performed as we wished, and Mr. Myers was content to plot the moves.

From the Original Programme Notes

Synopsis of ‘Merrie England’

‘No reign in English history has captured the imagination as much as that of Elizabeth I. The colour and pageantry, the adventure and intrigue, the poetry, music and dancing, the superstition and ribaldry, the wit and humour all so much a part of the age are found in ‘Merrie England’ The colourful characters of this era live again as they move through the story. There is Queen Elizabeth herself in all her eloquent dignity and majesty, but with the human passions of lesser mortals never far beneath the surface; the clever ambitious Earl of Essex, prepared to stake all to win the ‘golden crown’; the daring Sir Walter Raleigh ready to risk the wrath of his Queen for his beloved Bessie Throckmorton, the coquettish Kate, Windsor’s Queen of the May, who leads the superstitious townsfolk and especially the four merchants of Windsor in accusing the forest girl Jill-all-alone of witchcraft. Then there is the egotistical London actor, Walter Wilkins, who with Silas Simkins, and the rest of ‘his few, happy few, his band’ has come to Windsor to entertain the Queen. The evil Doctor Lopez recently arrived from Portugal to act as court physician, but who is in reality ‘the lackey of the King of Spain’, come to Windsor to poison the Queen. We also see the people of Windsor themselves, merchants, foresters, (including the love-sick brothers, Tom, and Ben), townspeople, rustics, and Morris dancers all intent on celebrating the May Day holiday.’

‘Merrie England’ was an enormous production and as I watched it being realised, I learnt so many of the ‘tricks of the trade’ which were to prove invaluable when I started producing and directing large cast musicals in the future. I simply loved Walter Wilkins and his solos and duets with Silas Simpkins, played by Michael, still resonate with me today. I spent long hours with Mrs. Bromilow in her girls’ physical education office learning to dance the hornpipe and when it finally came time for the show to open it proved to be a real highlight! Walter Wilkins became my totem for a long time. I used his name as a pseudonym and later both he and Silas Simkins turned up in novels I wrote much later in life. In English lessons the day after opening night our English teacher the ageing Veronica Bonser said:

‘Well, Hopkins, I see you think Shake-speare might be livened up by a few songs and dances.’

It was a reference