Festival Players founding member dies aged 88...
ONE of the last founder members of award-winning local drama group, The Festival Players, has died aged 88.
Louis Stanford, affectionately known to all as Lou, appeared in the first production performed by the society Young Wives Tale at the Robert Martin Theatre in January 1955 and went on to appear in 115 plays with the company over the next 50 years.
The first of the 44 plays to be directed by Lou was Present Laughter in 1956 and it was the first amateur production in 1963 of Salad Days, at that time the longest running musical in West End history, which gave the Festival Players their greatest success so far and earned Louis Stanford’s direction the headline, “Festival Players Hit a New Peak”.
Through Lou’s energetic chairmanship, Salad Days set a trend of ending each season with a musical play and this continued through The Boy Friend, Sweeney Todd and Free as Air, all of which he appeared in, and led to the continental tour of a new production of Salad Days in Loughborough’s twin towns of Schwabisch Hall and Epinal.
This was probably the high spot of society’s entire history and the fantastic reception that was received, featuring 17 curtain calls in Schwabisch Hall, was something members will remember for the rest of their lives.
Lou was managing director of Loughborough Travel Service and for many years his office in Bedford Square sold the tickets for Stanford Hall Theatre.
He was elected Hon Life President in 1981 and among many of the fine performances he gave it can be recorded that the newspaper critics of the time described him as giving “an amusing portrayal as Sir Lionel” in A Friend Indeed, “he looked amazingly sinister as the good Dr Lane” in The House on the Cliff, and in The Member for Gaza, he not only directed but “gave one of his best performances for some time”.
In the “The Deep Blue Sea” Lou gave a “finely sensitive performance” and in Nude with Violin “the part of the valet was impeccably filled by Louis Stanford whose linguistic accomplishment in several languages merited a special mention”.
As Hugh Walpole in The Secretary Bird Lou “was always in control of the situation, yet never smug, his mind bending non-sequiturs becoming surprisingly logical and appropriate and his re-telling of an old, old chestnut ranked alongside Eric Morecambe for timing and delivery”. In contrast, Lou, playing the husband in One O’Clock From the House, “delivered brilliantly droll lines in a spare laconic throw away style”.
In 2004 As Time goes By celebrated the company’s 50th year and 200th Production at Stanford Hall theatre and was a compilation of many of the best loved shows including, Happy as a Sandbag, Cowardy Custard, and of course, Salad Days.
Those founder members from 50 years ago, Louis Stanford, Margaret Stanford, and Jo Miller, were all there celebrating yet another milestone in the long life of the Festival Players.
The Loughborough Echo critic summed it all up by describing the evening as “a marvelous birthday bash”
Sadly that “marvelous birthday bash” proved to be the last production that Lou Stanford was actively involved with and he retired from on-stage roles and directing although still keeping active away from the limelight.
In hindsight, how fitting it was that his last show featured snippets from many of his favourite plays and musicals.
He had pioneered amateur theatre at Stanford 50 years earlier and was there to say goodbye to the theatre he loved a half century later when regrettably it closed to the public for good.
It is due, in no small measure, to the drive, enthusiasm and lifelong commitment of Lou Stanford that the Festival Players has grown from a fledgling drama society in 1954 to the well- respected company it now is presenting plays at Loughborough Town Hall, The Robert Martin Theatre, and latterly The Century Theatre at Coalville.
Poignantly, it is at Robert Martin Theatre that the Players’ next production Equus will be performed in July – back to the venue where Lou’s great adventure started in 1954.
Thank you Lou, you will be very sadly missed.