Martin Jacques

“Awfully big place, China”
When, at the end of 1989, I was asked to appear in Val’s forthcoming production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever it came as a complete surprise because I’d been out of the picture (so to speak) since 1981 when I appeared at the Grange in Val’s adaptation of Camelot.
I accepted at once, keen to be back at the renown theatre. The invitation couldn’t have arrived at a better time – I was recently returned from three years’ study at Bournemouth Poly and was working at Blackwells bookshop in Oxford pro-tem while I decided what to do with my life and career.
My sister Lindsay was also in the play, and the whole cast had such a good laugh rehearsing it during the winter and spring months; it was staged in late spring/early summer of 1990.
The production itself went smoothly, I thought, except for one night when another cast member, Caroline Finlay, reckoned she saw a ghost walk out of the wall in front of her in the ladies dressing room. There were a few jitters after that!
The colour photographs were taken of that production and the black & white shots a few months later [yet to be uploaded … ] in the autumn of 1990 at a post-Hayfever social evening organised, as ever, by Fred and Val.
Glad to share them with you.
Martin Jacques