Sliding doors and final curtains

Have you ever given up on a dream?

I come from a family of frustrated thespians. My mum directed me, my sister and our friends in The Spinsters of Lavender Lane, a witty 1950s one-act play by L. du Garde Peach, when we were still at primary school, so we could take part in the local drama festival.

We sourced Victorian-era costumes and props and mum drilled us until we were word perfect. We affected posh accents to play dedicated spinsters who unwittingly invite the attentions of men. The adjudicator noted the “maturity” of the subject matter, but awarded us first prize anyway.

Mum and dad had both enjoyed acting at school and I’ve included one of my dad’s reminiscences below. They were enticed back onto the stage in their late forties, when the drama teachers at my local comprehensive set up Janus Theatre Group (its posters just asking to be defaced). Dad played patrician types, like headteacher Wetherby Pond in the comedy The Happiest Days of Your Life (Alastair Sim starred in the movie). He and mum played Mr and Mrs Winslow in The Winslow Boy by Terrence Rattigan.

I could “age up” if I donned a sensible blouse and tweed skirt, and was cast in matronly roles, rather than as a teenager. My dad’s colleague came along to see the farce Little Boxes by John Bowen, in which I played one of the mothers, and asked dad if he knew whether I was single. “That’s my daughter! She’s sixteen!” dad objected.

During the summer holidays, I joined South Yorkshire Theatre for Youth, breaking out of my Barnsley bubble and meeting kids from other towns.

Diary entry, 18 August 1977

We started rehearsing in Rotherham for Much Ado About Nothing yesterday (Vicki, Sally and myself). We’re all floozies, come dancers. Instead of the Shakespearean times, the scene is a 1920s nightclub! A bit of a daft idea I think, but it’ll be loads more fun to rehearse than if it had been straight.

Some great people taking part. Two of the boys are very nice looking as well as to talk to (all the rest are nice to talk to). They’re both Neils – one dark, the other fair.

Today, we floozies had to practise walking, posing and seducing! (Not literally.) We practised on the males. We were a bit nervous – well, embarrassed is a better word.

I’ve never had a chance to find out what my reactions would be when I get to know more boys, so now I’m finding out.

Much Ado, 1977. I’m at the back. I’m still in touch with several of the other floozies.

The fair-haired Neil (Dudgeon, not pictured) is the only one of my SYTY contemporaries to have become a household name. He shone as Claudio in Much Ado, went on to read Drama at Bristol and landed a succession of TV roles that required a broad Yorkshire accent (though in real life his accent was pretty mild). He’s been solving fictional crimes as DCI John Barnaby in ITV’s Midsomer Murders since 2010.

The following summer I took to my soap box as suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst in Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What A Lovely War, a brilliant satirical musical about World War One. The line “The politicians chatter like imbeciles while civilisation bleeds to death!” sticks in my memory for some reason.

Me as Mrs Pankhurst, back row third from right.

Even during my gap year as a Community Service Volunteer at a large psychiatric hospital in Surrey, I squeezed in some drama, playing the giant’s “forlorn” servant, Jill, in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Then came the English and Drama degree at Goldsmiths, which I’d dreamed of for years, but bailed out of after just two terms. I enjoyed acting – as Rose in Harold Pinter’s The Room, I got totally immersed in her cryptic, sometimes comic monologues.

Diary entry 28 January 1981

There we are turning up for a rehearsal, and the pretence is as real as anything else. The tension is there. I’m Rose. I find it difficult to come back to life afterwards.

I got great feedback. But after my year out, I could no longer hack the studying. Plus, I found some of the other students pretentious (one literally wafted about in a cape, but what did I expect on a drama course!). Mostly, though, I was itching to earn a living and become independent.

As Rose in Harold Pinter’s The Room. (Note the early ’80s poodle perm.)

My last acting role was as teenage Jo’s selfish mother, Helen, in Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 working class northern play, A Taste of Honey, performed upstairs at a south London pub in 1981.

By that time I’d written to dozens of publishing companies and just landed a job as an editorial assistant.

One door closed and another door opened.

I’ve made that switch sound easy, but I’m only too aware how lucky I was, because:

• At Goldsmiths I’d had a full student grant (not loan) which I didn’t have to pay back.

• I was able to claim unemployment benefit and housing benefit while I looked for work. (Going back home to Yorkshire was not an option.)

• For my eighth birthday my Aunty Jean, a senior secretary in the civil service, had given me a Junior Petite typewriter and her professional touch typing manuals. That set me on course to be the lightning fast typist that I still am today.

• Publishing companies: a) employed editorial assistants (internships were not a thing); and b) paid them (just) enough to live on in London. In 1981 I earned £5000 per year. (In today’s money, that’s about £19,000.)

I’ve not been tempted back on stage since, apart from to sing with my choir, where I’m happier blending with dozens of other voices, rather than taking the spotlight.

There’s a brilliant youth theatre scene where I live now, and long may it last.

I’ve been inspired to write about this after reading Nan Tepper’s entertaining resumé of her resumé. She’s about my age and reckons she’s had 80+ different jobs en route to becoming a writer and graphic designer: everything from waitress, to Judge Judy’s admin assistant, to clown, to HIV educator. Being a Jill of All Trades is no bad thing!

Comedian Faye Treacy was in the same cohort at the Brit School (for performing arts) as singer Adele and wrote an insightful piece a while ago about the pressures of the creative industries, which you can read here.

Over to you…

Have you closed the door on a dream, realising it wasn’t for you? Or switched tracks radically, by chance or design? Please do share your comments if you’re able. As always, I love to hear your thoughts.

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My late dad reminisced about his own school dramas in a short piece in his local parish magazine in 2015, as narrated to a wonderful lady, Kay, who transcribed his stories:

Treading the Boards by Frank Varley

In 1940 I was a pupil at Kirk Balk, which was then separate boys and girls schools. The boys were asked to do a concert for three nights in aid of the Soldiers Comforts Fund. I was twelve years old, in 2A, and our contribution was a short pirate play called Mariposa Bung, which had been written by L. du Garde Peach, who had a small theatre in Hope to put on his plays. I loved being in plays and obtained the part of a Cabin Boy called Squib.

We performed the play in the school hall, and the first night was going well, until an unrehearsed accident occurred during the performance.

The cast decided to play a trick on Ben the Bosun (played by Brian Thawley) and I put a white sheet over my head and came on stage pretending to be a ghost, which nearly frightened Ben the Bosun to death. He ran across the stage, tripped over an electric wire and flew head-first through the paper scenery just where, by a strange coincidence, there was a porthole. The hall was packed with parents who laughed their sides sore, thinking it was part of the play!

Mr Guest, the English Master, ran round the back of the stage to check if Brian had hurt himself, but he said “No Sir, I’m fine,” so Mr Guest said, “Right. You’re going to have to do the same thing for the next two nights.”

They put a mat behind the porthole so that he’d have a softer landing. We wouldn’t be allowed to do it today! Incidentally, the Pirate Captain was Allan MacKay, our late ex-MP.

With it being the Mariposa, we had to find a boy to play the pirate girl’s part – this was Bob Uttley from Pilley, who had lovely dark curly hair. He was made up and dressed in a pirate girl’s dress and looked quite the part. In fact, a lady who’d been in the audience said afterwards to Mr Guest that she’d really enjoyed the play, but saw that we’d had to borrow a girl to play the part of Mariposa. Mr Guest assured her that no, we didn’t cheat and it was certainly a boy.

I included a couple of dad’s other childhood stories in my piece In Praise of Playing Out.

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Thank you…

to all who engaged with my piece last week, School Trip Memories. You shared some brilliant – and alarming – anecdotes! Do take a peek at the comments, if you haven’t had a chance. Swimming in crocodile-infested waters, anyone? Yikes!

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© Wendy Varley 2025