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Dateline: 3rd August, 2005
Community Celebration at the Customs House Last year a box of hand-written scripts, wrapped in brown paper, were discovered in South Shields and brought to Ray Spencer, the director of the Customs House, the town's theatre/arts centre. They were plays dating from the 1920s which had been, it is thought, performed at the town's Alexander Theatre, now long defunct, by a local rep company run by Eva Elwes. One of them, Dolly Peel, which was written by Ms Elwes, dealt with a local legend, the Dolly Peel of the title. A fishwife, smuggler, publican, songwriter, entertainer and friend of the town's first MP Sir Robert Ingham, Dolly Peel stowed away on a Royal Navy ship after her husband and son were press-ganged. On being discovered by the captain, she was put to work looking after the sick and injured and proved to be such a good nurse that, instead of being dumped ashore thousands of miles from home, she was pardoned and her husband and sons released from service with the navy and exempted from future press-ganging. As this is the Customs House's tenth anniversary, Spencer thought it would be a good idea to revive the play, which had had its first (and, till now, last) performance in 1923 at the Alexander, particularly as 2005 is the SeaBritain Festival (the Year of the Sea), part of which are the Mouth of the Tyne Festival and the visit last week to the Tyne of the Tall Ships. It would be, he felt, a celebration of the history and culture of the town, looking back across around 200 years - Dolly Peel was born in 1782 and died in 1857. It's basically a melodrama, with the hard-hearted father, the sweet daughter, the clean-cut young hero, and, of course, the rough, even lawless but good-hearted, lower orders, such as Dolly Peel herself and the devoted elderly servant, Old Martha Martin. Robert Ingham, of course, appears as one of the goodies! In keeping with the celebration of the community theme, director Dolores Porretta Brown has assembled a mixed cast of 32 professional and amateur actors, including some children from a local stage school, to present the play at the Customs House, from 2nd until 6th August. Members of a number of local amateur societies are represented in the cast and production crew: the Westovians (South Shields), the Little Theatre Cleadon, the People's Theatre Newcastle and the Royalty Theatre, Sunderland. She has also added a new scene at the beginning, showing the cast of the 1923 production assembling for the dress rehearsal, to place the play in its historical context. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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