INDEX	November 30, 2022
Dickens of a panto all those years ago!
I went to see Lionel Bart's Oliver in the early sixties, probably at the Wimbledon Theatre but my memory suggests The Palladium. The memory plays strange tricks. More than 100 kids, the children of the factory workers at Frenlite Flour, Bow, were transferred as a block by several coaches to the theatre, returning home some hours later, tired and happy. It may have been the factory owners attempt to bring culture to the hoi polloi, or perhaps an attempt to make our parents feel good about working for the company. Who knows?
Some years later my brother Simon was in a production of Oliver at our school, Sir Fred's in WGC. It was directed by the legendary Hugh Croydon so it was probably pretty good. But I didn't go. I regret that. Years later I heard someone had made a VHS of one of the performances but I have never come across it.
INDEX Jonathan Brind		November 30, 2022