Toad of Toad Hall

This was the most ambitious production to date for THE YOUNG THEATRE (St. Alban's) - their first musical - and their biggest audience. The production ran for three evening performances plus a matinee - and played to virtually full houses on each occasion. Rod Baker as Toad developed such a rapport with the children in the matinée audience that unscheduled audience participation meant the show over-ran by some fifteen minutes!!

The music of H. Fraser-Simson was given a new orchestration for this show by the Musical Director Christopher Hobbs who also managed to recruit a number of his fellow students at the Royal Academy of Music, and persuade them to come out to North Harrow to record all the music for the show in one four hour session in the church hall. It was a somewhat chaotic session technically, but ultimately pretty successful considering the incredible difficulties that these budding musicians were required to operate under!! It meant that some of them were able to sit in the audience and listen to themselves accompanying the songs, as pointed out by the local press.