“ENGLISH ROSE” GASSED OUT ON ITS FIRST NIGHT, A GAS ON THE SECOND
From accounts by Helen Heubi in "The Muskoka Times"
Friday 28 September, 2001, was to be the first night of two for Peter Scott’s well-knit play, “English Rose”, starring Muskoka’s own Robin Clipsham. By showtime, 8 pm, the Gravenhurst Opera House was comfortably full, the audience primed for an evening of inspired comedy and the artist ready to prance onto the stage and liven it up as if she were a whole troupe of players. That Friday evening performance, however, simply didn’t take place. Seconds before curtain time the Opera House had to be evacuated because of a gas leak.
“I was all set to step out on the stage,” said Robin Clipsham, “When I peeped through a chink and saw people getting up and leaving.” At first she thought that someone must have fallen ill and had to be taken out. Then the whole hall emptied - in less than two minutes. Robin groped her way in the blacked out stage to the headset to try to find out what was going on, couldn’t see what button to press, so pressed them all. After what seemed like a very long time, but was only a few minutes, she learned why the Opera House was being evacuated. Imagine being about to perform, only to see your audience quietly evaporate. And they didn’t have to scramble out of costume and makeup and into street clothes.
Without waste of time my friend and I had joined the orderly audience gently streaming down the stairs by the elevator and out the south entrance. As I look back I am reminded of one of those dreamlike slow motion sequences in a film, with a slight blurring and little or no sound.Outside, we saw three fire engines strategically positioned. Firemen were shrugging on their coats and heading toward the entrances. Later I asked the fire chief if the sirens had been on, and indeed they had, although we inside did not hear them. My friend and I joined the crowd on the pavements around the Opera House, and waited about half an hour until someone strolled over and said, “Robin’s gone home.”
Two teams of firefighters were sent into the Opera House to discover the source of the strong smell of gas, and found it in the basement under the Trillium Court. They also found three or four people backstage who were not aware of the evacuation, and joined us rapidly outside. Within the hour the gas people had removed the offending boiler and turned off the furnace until repairs could be completed. For the rest of the night, however, no one was allowed back in the building.
Meanwhile, across the street at the Rickshaw for a late supper I reminisced about the Saturday afternoon back in the 1940s when cottagers at Muldrew Lake decided to celebrate our annual regatta by going to the show in town, only to find the movie theatre closed for a death in the manager’s family. The town was full of Norweigian airmen, tourists, cottagers and town residents at loose ends. The younger and wilder of us crashed a dance in the town hall - now the Opera House. Other more sedate members of our party ended up in that very same Chinese restaurant for a coffee and milkshake to fortify us for the three-mile walk back to Indian Landing.
My friend couldn't join me when I saw the full performance of "English Rose". I enjoyed it enough for two people. A full review follows in a later post.
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