The Matchgirls

Following rather aptly on the Octagon's just-completed documentary on trade unionism, Walmsley Operatic Society are presenting the musical "The Matchgirls" by Tony Russell and Bill Owen all this week at the School Hall, Egerton.

The story of the strike of factory girls at Bryant and May's in 1888, encouraged by the militant socialist Annie Besant, might seem at first glance an off subject for a musical comedy.

In fact, this isn't a musical comedy but a folk opera, romanticising what was really a bitter and dirty fight in the long saga of man's inhumanity to man.

Fossy-jaw and starvation wages in return for long hours of dreary labour become acceptable only after the passage of time had cast a gloss over events but much of the success of this show lies in the fact that Bill Owen never allows the romance to become mawkish and that Tony Russell's music is hard, angular and highly intelligent.

The Walmsley society give it vibrant and abundant life.

This is the kind of show where the small part player and the chorus really come into their own and the delightful characters created by Christine Roberts, Audrey Raistrick and a host of others are such as to make this a very lively production indeed, imaginatively directed by David Tyldesley.

Susan Briggs plays Kate, the girl so incensed with the injustice of life in the match factory that she engineers the first strike of women workers.

Valerie Walmsley is Annie Besant, the well-off, well-educated woman who made the matchgirls' cause her own.

Brian Williams, who has taken the part of Joe at short notice, scores a signal triumph.

The Walmsley society is a progressive one. One can be only too thankful that it at least has hauled itself out of the rut of continual revivals of old favourites.

"The Matchgirls" is full of honest effort and is entertainment on an intelligent level. It deserves equally honest and intelligent support.

C.P.

One never ceases to be surprised at the achievements of Walmsley Church Operatic Society. Pioneers in the do-it-yourself scenery and costumes movement, here they were introducing to the North West a remarkable musical documentary which may never be a box office hit, but nonetheless could be the forerunner of a new dimension in musical entertainment.

Based on the Bryant and May factory girls strike in 1888, it presents in dramatic form an episode in social history that graphically illustrates the birth of a form of industrial protest now all too familiar.

It is grim and gay, sometimes bawdy, funny, with a most remarkable descriptive score brilliantly played on organ and piano by Arnold Thornton and Jessie Whittaker. Their duo performance could mark the period when expensive orchestras began to lose favour with amateurs.

Composer Tony Russell and lyricist Bill Owen turn a meeting of match girls and dockers under the prosaic title of "An amendment to a motion" into an hilarious melange of words and music and even the dread "phossy jaw" disease which plagued the match girls is set to music in a number aptly called Phosphorus.

And what a feeling for atmosphere these players have. The choreography of Lois Booth, the chorus impression of abject factory girls goaded into virile action, even the gaunt scenery with its foreman's watch tower, all serve to create a graphic overall picture.

Notable individual performances were contributed by Brian Williams as docker Joe, Susan Briggs as Kate, his girlfriend, Valerie Walmsley as Annie Besant, Christine Roberts as Polly, while Audrey Raistrick, a teacher at the Egerton school rooms where the show was given, turned in a remarkable character study as Old Min. David Tyldesley produced.

Tom Wildern