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Adam Harrison, stage manager on a special charity performance of Follies, describes the experience of taking the musical to the grand London Palladium
To play at Frank Matcham's magnificent Palladium of 1910 was always the dream for variety artists during the golden age. It was considered the biggest music hall in London and the best in the world. To be top of the bill at the London Palladium was something special.
The first show at the venue that I can remember seeing was Aladdin with Cilla Black, Leslie Crowther and Terry Scott as dame. The finale transformation was a gauze of the blue and white willow pattern plate that dissolved to reveal the famous triple revolve with the company circling under the bridge on the picture.
As a child I watched all those Sunday Night At... programmes on the telly and now I know the scenery for that was designed by fellow Frank Matcham Society member Richard Greenough.
TV designer, Richard Morris, of Richard Douglas Productions, asked me to stage manage a Stephen Sondheim charity show, and although I have been a stage manager and company manager in more than 20 London theatres, I have never worked at the Palladium. The show was to be Follies and since the venue was the London Palladium, the answer had to be yes.
We rehearsed a company of 26 named roles, 12 dancers and 20 chorus, including five Olivier winners and an Oscar nominee.
Members of the Stephen Sondheim Society, having bought a £100 ticket for the show, were entered into a competition. The big prize was to come in to watch rehearsals for the day. During a break, I asked one woman where she lived and where she had come from, half-expecting her to say Basingstoke. But she had made the effort to catch the dawn Eurostar, as she lived in Belgium. and she brought a luxury box of chocolates with her.
After two weeks of rehearsals, we moved to the Palladium for one night only - a Sunday. We had to share the stage with The Sound of Music set. Fortunately, most of the abbey and house flies or trucks away. And the big mountain? I'm sworn to secrecy, but we were not allowed to use it either.
The stage might be wide at 46-foot, but at only 40-foot deep with little wing space, there was little extra room. to get from stage left to stage right, the artists had to take the stairs under the prompt corner and cross under the stage to ump stage right, only to walk through the scenery from the other show.
Some 60 moving lights were available to our lighting designer. But the more you have, the longer it takes to programme them all. While that was happening, two o the best follow-spots ops in the country were picking up our cast and seemed to know where they are moving to and when to fade up and down on them almost before my deputy stage manager told them what is going to happen.
One of these, Linford, has been working the spot box at the Palladium for some 43 years. He is a West End legend.
Sound-wise, a large team of 'noise boys' brought in mics for the 36-piece orchestra and 28 radio mics for our company. Quite a logistical game to sort out, but it was all working by the 11am dress rehearsal.
I am always surprised at how small these old theatres seem. The dressing room block is over only three floors. There are several biggish chorus rooms, but most of the other rooms are too small to wing a cat. Even the third best is too small for a sofa.
The star suites on stage level are something else. Both rooms are the size of a modest Mayfair flat. One of them is off the delightfully named 'donkey run'. Well, at least the donkey smell has gone. But sadly too has that famous tiple revolve with its rising centre, and those tabs which opened French action-style up to the corners. In fact, they took up so much space when swagged into the pros, they were not replaced in the recent refurbishment. But I would have loved to have seen the old controls in the prompt corner.
Over the years, there have been many changes to the Palladium, but still it manages to feel just the same as when Gracie Fields and Judy Garland, and a thousand other stars, worked there.
The stalls tea room became a big variety bar many years ago. The Tudor bar, where the stars met the press after first nights, is now Andrew Lloyd Webber's room, with any odd Tudor fittings replaced by walls of framed posters for his musicals. The foyer and dress circle Cinderella bar have had nice restorations.
Standing down stage centre, the atmosphere is special. There are more than 2,200 sets and yet that wide, but intimate, house wraps around you.
Frank Matcham lived up to his reputation with this theatre, which opened six years after the London Coliseum. both of these still rival Drury Lane for the title of biggest and best London house.
© The Stage Newspaper Limited
