Column by historian Roger Bingham of Ackenthwaite:
MID-DECEMBER is the season for a school Christmas play.
In the inter-war period, one of the most lavish productions was staged by Oakfield girls’ school at Arnside.
It was a private establishment, run by a methodist minister and his wife to provide accomplishments for young ladies which included cricket in summer and drama in the winter.
So accomplished was their theatrical repertoire that the plays, written and produced by Marguerite Steen, were published commercially.
As the cast was all-female, cross-dressing was required for the many kings and princes as well as for a swineherd, a swashbuckling highwayman (complete with long boots and breeches) and, once, for a chorus of street urchins called ‘gay young friskers’.
Even though the curriculum did not extend to exams, the girls would, on leaving the school, carry with them memories of how treading the boards had provided ‘all the tremulous excitement of the first night, the uneasy relief on the second and uproarious gaiety on the third,when everyone regretted we were not doing it for a month’.
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