Heartrending melodrama ("Her Virtue for Ten Pence"), a barber shop quartet, a Dickensian schoolroom and sentimental drawing room ballads helped to bring the Victorian era back to life in West Malvern on Saturday. A 20-strong cast (including Queen Victoria herself, looking suspiciously like Valerie Blackbourn), aged from about 10 to 80, put on a sparkling entertainment at St James School's Anstruther Theatre, to a script by producer Gwyn Klee with musical backing by John and Susan Raine at the keyboard (Susan also playing several other roles). Beautifully dressed by Olive Wickens, with lighting by Mike Staiger, and using sources as varied as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Frank Muir and Queen Victoria's own diaries, it added up to a highly entertaining evening. Other cast members included Michael Andrews, Bill Bardsley, Alex Dakin, Laurie Gregory, Emily Knightley, David Matthews, Jim Nisbet, Simon Vaughan-Spencer, Madeleine Stone, Kate and Anthony Wheaton, John Wickens and David Wright, plus a group of St James's School girls who had returned early from their half-term break specially to present a selection of songs by Gilbert and Sullivan. The evening was organised by the Friends of St James's Church and proceeds go to the Church Roof Fund.
With British servicemen once again on a war footing in the Middle East, memories will be poignant of the 31 men of West Malvern who gave their lives in the two world wars of the twentieth century. They will be remembered again in a special service in St James's Church at 6.30pm next Sun-day, Armistice Day (November 11), when the local branch of the Royal British Legion, in its 80th anniversary year, is hoping for a good congregation.
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