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Painswick Players

The First 85 years…


1923 - 1961: Painswick Players
1962 - 1982: Country Players

1982 - 1994: PaDS

1997 - 1999: PaDS born again

2000: Return of Painswick Players

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

2007-08

 

 

 

 

Lucy Hyett

In the beginning...

 

Painswick Players was born in the first quarter of the last century. In 1923, Miss Lucy Hyett produced As You Like It on the bowling green in her back garden (see right), the idyllic grounds of Painswick House, now part of the Rococo Garden.

 

For the next 38 years, this truly formidable lady was responsible - virtually single-handedly - for 56 separate productions, involving some 93 plays, including a dozen Shakespeares.

 

One obvious mark of a Lucy Hyett production right from the beginning was the sheer scale. The cast of the 1926 production of Henry IV must almost have outnumbered the audience!

 

 

1926: Shakespeare's Henry IV: a cast of thousands...

 



... including Falstaff and his merry band

 

Another was attention to detail, particularly with regard to costume, as the following designs for the 1930 production of King John show.

 

King John costume designs and...


Pictures of the performance of King John at Painswick House

 

The routine was quickly established for a summer production at Painswick House and a late autumn/Christmas (or sometimes spring) production in 'The Institute' (now The Painswick Centre).

 


The cast of the 1933 Christmas production, The Dragon, at The Institute

 

Many of the productions, particularly at The Institute, were evenings of one act plays. The following press cutting for a 1935 evening of One Acts is typical: you certainly got value for money back then!

 

 

Particularly in the early days, Lucy Hyett frequently took acting parts herself, usually minor roles. However, in 1935, with typical courage - not to mention bravado - she produced Macbeth, with herself in the part of Lady Macbeth.

 


1935: The sleepwalking scene from Macbeth at Painswick House
with Lady Macbeth played by Lucy Hyett

 

Some idea of the impact of the performance can be drawn from this startling water colour impression painted by a local artist after the event.

 

Scary, or what?

 

By the end of the 1930s, the tone was becoming less serious with comedies like the 1939 production, Eldorado by Bernard Gilbert, which tells of the passionate struggle to possess... a potato!

 


1939: Eldorado by Bernard Gilbert, with Mr H Waring,
Mrs Rose Tranter, Ms D Browning and Mr Charles Sysum
(who was the Painswick House head gardener at the time)

 

In the turbulence of the war years, Painswick Players still managed to produce a regular programme of One Acters and excerpts and a younger generation of Painswick Players emerged. These included Julian Slade who was later to achieve fame and fortune as the writer of Salad Days and other hit musical revues of the 1950s.

 

 
1945: The Prince Who Was A Piper (Painswick House);                        1950: The Rivals (The Institute)with Julian Slade, far right

 
1951: A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Julian Slade and Diana Barclay...

 
... as well as some 'Rude Mechanicals'

 

A hint of Miss Hyett's consummate professionalism can be gathered from the following excerpt of a Stroud News & Journal review of J M Barrie's Dear Brutus in 1952:

 

'Throughout there were evidences of Miss Lucy Hyett's experience... The casting was admirable, the production flawless, no prompting, swift and quiet scene changes and throughout an air of confidence.'

 

 
1952: J M Barrie's Dear Brutus and Shakespeare's The Tempest

 

Text Box: From an article by Geoffrey Hoyland in Goucestershire Countryside, June 1954. The Players began in 1923 with As you like it, followed in the succeeding three years by Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and scenes from Henry IV (Part II), all in the open air, while during the intervening winters various one-act plays and Yeats's Countess Cathleen were performed indoors. In 1927 they broke new ground with Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, a pre-Shakespearean comedy which lent itself admirably to the fine Gloucestershire dialect—certainly well-known to Shakespeare himself—in which much of it was expressed. Since then the Shakespeare plays produced—all in the open air—have included As you like it, part of King John, scenes from The Winter's Tale, Macbeth (an outstanding success), A Midsummer Night's Dream, and finally, in 1952, The Tempest, while the winter programmes have included, among many others, such plays as She Stoops to Conquer, The Lady from Alphaqueque, The Critic, The Late Christopher Bean, The Rivals, and Dear Brutus. Finally, the Players broke new ground once more in November 1953 with a moving performance of Christopher Fry's The Boy with a Cart. During the war years, depleted as it was and in spite of all the difficulties imposed by the black-out and restricted travelling, the Company never went 'out of production' but kept the tradition alive with a series of one-act plays, so that not a single year was blank. From the above list it will be apparent that from the beginning the Painswick Players have 'hitched their wagon to a star', and it is the proud boast of both Players and Producer that never once, during the whole thirty years, have they put on a shoddy or meretricious piece. This high ideal has, in its turn, produced a high -standard of acting and a number of thoroughly competent village actors. In the early years Captain Vernon Barnes, a local architect, was a tower of strength to the Company, and equally good work was done by Mr. Charles Sysum and Mr. Fred Parry, both gardeners by profession. The late Miss Elizabeth Drewett was also for long a valuable member of the Company, and during the earlier years Miss Ida Hyett and Miss Helen Boger gave invaluable assistance with the musical side of the Shakespeare plays in particular. The Producer herself has taken many prominent parts with success, and of late years there has been no lack of new recruits to fill the gaps inevitably caused by time. In recent years the organisation of County and other dramatic festivals and competitions has done much to foster interest and improve production in such companies as this. The Painswick Players have taken part in several of these festivals; they have won awards and gained much from the criticism and help thus received, but their main purpose is, as it has always been, to produce plays for their own and their neighbours’ enjoyment, not to score points in a competition or please an adjudicator. For a somewhat similar reason' it has always been the Company's policy to make at home, not to hire, the necessary properties and costumes, with the result that now, after thirty years, the whole upper floor of Painswick House is rumoured to be filled with such a wealth of costumery that even the Producer does not know what she possesses! It is an old saying that God made the country, man made the town, and the Devil made the country-town. We would make no claim that Painswick is wholly free from operations of the "gentleman with the horns and tail” -indeed, he is popularly supposed to keep a jealous eye on the churchyard and pull up by the roots the hundredth yew-tree if any one is rash enough to plant it. But the yews, it is said, now number at least 106, so we must have kept the Devil at bay for a good part of his time in recent years, and surely some small part of the credit for this feat may go to the Painswick Players who have kept their Company together year after year in hard work and good fellowship, and have presented to their fellow-townsmen many of the greatest glories of the English Stage.

 

Her last production was the 1961 Christmas show, The Holly and the Ivy. During rehearsals, she was heard to exclaim, 'This play will be the death of me...' As ever, she was right. She died early in January 1962.

 


Lucy Hyett
1879 - 1962


There is a commemorative plaque beside the stage in The Painswick Centre. Over the years, a legend has grown up that the spirit of Miss Lucy continues to keep an eye on things in the form a butterfly, sometimes to be seen fluttering around during rehearsals.

 

 


Painswick Players list of productions 1923 - 1961
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