The JUKEBOX Café and The Crypt Room – a match made in heaven
In the Hampstead Players history (founded 1976) our Crypt Room has been used for entertainment quite effectively over the years. Twelfth Night and AGM Entertainments have been regular occurrences and since 2019 Burns Night has become a feature. In 1987 and 1988 Pat Gardner directed and devised Candlelight Theatre evenings with wine & eats provided. Between 1993 and 2000 RSC actor & HPC member Ian East directed six productions in the Crypt, from two Tom Stoppard one-acters in 1993 to Sophocles’ Oedipus in 2000. In 2001 we put on a two-hour intimate production of Hamlet, which travelled from the Crypt to southwest France.
Between 2002 and 2007 there were five lovely productions by the Hampstead Players Youth Theatre, from the moving Bernard Kops musical Dreams of Anne Frank to Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna. In 2008, 2010 and 2019 the Crypt was home to tribute evenings to HP & HPC stalwarts who have sadly left us – Laverock Newman, Diana Raymond, John Petti and Pat Gardner – and in 2016 to one more play, Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On, performed fittingly on the group’s 40thanniversary.
But as an audience or actor in much of the above I cannot recall a more exhilarating show or better use of the room than ‘Proprietor’ Gaynor Bassey-Fish’s The Jukebox Café that rocked the Crypt from Thursday 26th to Saturday 28th May last week. Before setting foot inside, we had to get past the bouncer aka ‘Venue Security’ – our Curate Graham Dunn – and present ourselves to the box office team, ably supervised by Venue Manager and barman Jon Siddall.
The Crypt Room was brilliantly transformed into a nightclub with a raised platform for the nattily and sassily dressed two guys and three dolls, the ‘ensemble’, plus Gaynor, director and soloist. On the piano, serenading us on our arrival was Roger Limb, a composer for Doctor Who, responsible for the Music Orchestration.
We patrons were seated around lamplit tables, unashamedly swigging our wine. The music, good vibes and atmosphere encouraged us to clap, sing-along and generally join in, Every song, from the 50s, 60s and 70s, all 29 of them, brought enthusiastic cheers and applause.
There was our Vicar, Jeremy Fletcher, with bass guitar, giving us his best ‘Elvis’ with You’re So Square (Baby, I Don’t Care) and ripping into Mustang Sally which got us all going on the chorus (ride, Sally, ride). Shereen Abdullah sang a beautifully moving Pearl’s a Singer towards the end, by which time we really did feel we were ‘in a nightclub’. She also brought out her violin to good effect on certain songs. Bonnie Taylor seduced us with, well, I Want To Be Seduced. Ashley Collins tackled the dramatic I Who Have Nothing and gave it great soaring voice.
Trouble is a great Lieber/Stoller song which Elvis belted out at baddie Walter Matthau in my favourite Presley film ‘King Creole’, but Gaynor gave it her own very individual and fierce interpretation, and followed this up by accompanying Ashley on Teach Me How To Shimmy… and, boy, could she shimmy!
The lovely voice and presence of Jenny Lupa graced a number of the songs including I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself and an ‘early Elvis’ witty duet with her singing Don’t to Roger’s Love Me.
But there wasn’t a dodgy note in the show, with the performers well-rehearsed, relaxed and clearly enjoying themselves, moving and dancing and connecting with each other and us. They performed singly, in pairs, in groups and in Da Doo Ron Ron Shereen, Bonnie & Jenny conjured up The Ronettes.
I hear Saturday’s final audience got an Encore – Mustang Sally (reprise). Well, Friday’s also asked for ‘More!’ We were well satisfied anyway.
Many were thanked in the programme from Stage Lighting Design to Venue Hostesses and all deserved their thanks, but most touching was the line on the programme: ‘Thank you to you, the audience, for your company’.
What a fillip it was in these extraordinarily difficult times! Thank you all.