'All Change' Act 1 Scene 11 - Hell's Kitchen.
Scene 11 : Hell’s Kitchen.
A contemporary account by the traveller, Hugh Miller, vividly evoked not just Hell’s Kitchen, the notoriety of which is well-documented, but Hell’s Kitchen the night before a prize-fight.
In rehearsals we were somewhat carried away by the richness of material culled from Bell’s Sporting Life, which detailed blow by blow, round by round (all 93 of them), the notorious fight between Bendigo of Nottingham and Ben Caunt of London.
Eventually we realized that the importance for our story was not the fight itself but its impact on the new railway town that was in its infancy around Wolverton station. Hordes of cudgel-, bearing ruffians, ironically named ‘lambs’, roamed the district, and affected the result of the fight by intimidating crowds and officials alike, and finally rioted in Wolverton, when the station gates were shut against them.
These were Wolverton’s Frontier Town days.
(Description adapted from the script notes in ‘All Change’ booklet – 1977)
Creator
Nevitt, Roy, Broadhurst, Margaret and members of Stantonbury Campus Drama Group
Extent
2 typed pages
Reference number
ALC/026/011
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