Once again it is time to ring up the curtain on our Spring Production and it is my pleasure to write a short message for inclusion in the programme covering “Pink Champagne.”

I can assure our Patrons that the Society has every confidence that this will again prove a happy and attractive Show, to add to the long line of very successful productions of the past 21 years.  As President, I have every confidence that with the continued loyalty and enthusiasm of our members, under the able and professional direction of our Producer, Mr John Henderson, this will prove yet another vintage year in the history of our Society.

As in the past, we shall strive not only to give our Patrons another first class Show, but by their patronage, coupled with the excellent financial and loyal support of our Vice-Presidents, we hope once again to fulfil the Society’s sincere desire to make a generous sum available for the support of our local charities.

The Society will always welcome applications from anyone interested in joining.  Applications should be made to the Secretary, 135 High Street, Rushden.

My personal thanks and appreciation to all concerned.

I would like to take this opportunity of thanking the members of the Society for the single honour they have accorded me through my election as Chairman, and you our patrons for your continued support.

Since 1947 when we started with “Blossom Time”, we have had many successes, and many fine producers.  I recommend “Pink Champagne” to you as “one of our best”; the members of the company have voted our producer this year as “one of the best”.

John Henderson, MBE, our new producer has a wide and varied experience of the Theatre; he became a professional actor and worked with Repertory Companies until the outbreak of War.

A long spell with ENSA followed, and in 1946 he accepted an appointment in Uganda, and whilst there produced a pageant with a cast of nine hundred.

He was awarded the Coronation Medal for writing and producing the first inter-racial revue in Africa for the Coronation celebrations and in 1961 the MBE for his services to the Theatre.

He has produced all kinds of shows, Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Gilbert and Sullivan, Pantomime Revues, Opera and Farce.

Since he returned to this country he has done much TV, Theatre and Film work; his last film was Stranger in the House, with James Mason and Geraldine Chaplin.  He has appeared in Z Cars, Emergency Ward 10, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, Dixon of Dock Green, Gideon’s Way, Cross Roads, The Likely Lads etc.

With a record such as this, is it any wonder that he has been asked, and we are all delighted that he has accepted, to produce our next show, which was such an artistic success when we produced it in 1950 – “The Vagabond King”.

See you all again then.

One night, in gay pleasure-loving Vienna, Gabriel Eisenstein pushes his friend Falke, who is dressed up as a bat, into a public fountain.  For this disturbance he is condemned to eight days in the public prison.  Rosalinda, Gabriel’s pretty wife, is most indignant, especially as he is due to report to the prison on the eve of their wedding anniversary and to pay him out she invites an over-ardent admirer, Alfred, an opera singer, to take his place at their celebration supper.  Falke has apparently forgiven Gabriel and has offered him an invitation to Prince Orlovsky’s pink champagne party, at the same time persuading him to delay going to gaol until the next morning.  When Gabriel does not surrender himself to the law, the prison Governor brings his men to arrest him: and they arrest of course the man who is having an intimate supper in Gabriel’s dressing-gown with Gabriel’s wife – Alfred.  But Falke’s revenge has only just begun, and later in the evening there appear at the champagne party, through his influence, and unknown to each other, Gabriel, Rosalinda, the prison Governor and Rosalinda’s maid Adele who is playing truant and has borrowed one of her mistress’s gowns.  Rosalina is furious at the sight of Gabriel flirting with her maid in the belief that she is a girl from the ballet – though he did find the likeness to Adele disconcerting at first.  Falke discourages Rosalinda from making a scene and suggests instead that she offers herself as a subject of flirtation and tries to win from Gabriel the chiming watch with which he is enchanting the other ladies.  Next morning in the prison there is considerable confusion: Adele looks in to see Gabriel and finds Alfred, hoping to stop him from mentioning her escapade to the mistress; Gabriel tries to get himself arrested, only to find that there is already an Eisenstein in the cells; and Rosalinda arrives to get Alfred released before Gabriel can hear about their intimate supper party.  Naturally everybody discovers everybody else’s duplicity in the events of the previous night, but with the arrival of Falke they see that it was part of his revenge for a wetting to set them all at loggerheads, and they forgive each other.  And Gabriel is even saved from gaol – for Falke had invited the Governor of the prison to the pink champagne party where he found him masquerading as a French chevalier.