Programme
Northern School Of Music (NSM)
1956

The Everyman play is a weird one, as all personified "moral plays" are. Characters embody ideas instead of personalities such as Knowledge and Fellowship and are a bit allegorical for most contemporary audiences, it's not a popular technique today or in the 1950s. Who needs allegory and metaphor when you've just come out the other end of the very real WW2.

Speech and Drama students of the Northern School of Music were not successful in making them familiar, according to a review, it was all a bit medieval. Robert Hall, who played Everyman, “was good enough as a sinner,” and Helen Reynolds was Five-Wits with the best stage presence but “one could not understand why she was dressed as a page boy.” To be fair, why not.

Ref: NSM/20

Part of the #NSM2020 project "A 20/20 Legacy: the centenary of the Northern School of Music" supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.