Shakespeare and On the Buses?
This image that I posted on Fairlynch’s Facebook page got a fair bit of interest recently. Yes, ‘there is a connection’ I wrote, but I left it at that. So here’s a bit of what I’ve found during the research for my forthcoming booklet about Reg Varney which will accompany the 2016 exhibition ‘Our Little Clown’ at Fairlynch Museum. Yes, Reg did indeed play Shakespeare. Here he is as the clown or ‘wise fool’ Touchstone, a performance for which he won praise in a 1953 production of As You Like It at the celebrated Mermaid Theatre. The above booklet, published in 1951 and found among Reg's papers, tells the story of the 20th-century Mermaid Theatre, the life's work of actor Bernard Miles with his wife, Josephine Wilson. His original Mermaid Theatre was a large barn at his house in the St. John's Wood area of London. This seated 200 people, and during 1951 and 1952 ...