The Chronicle 682

32 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

He’s Behind You...

Cameo Capers By John Wiggins

While the outgoing Warden has overseen so much success in his ten-year tenure of Teddies, his one regret may well be that there have been only four staff productions in which he could display his undoubted stagecraft. He started with a small part and while he certainly finished with a big one, his rise to prominence took time, not helped by the biennial nature of the productions.

The 12th Warden established the precedent of the head man making a cameo appearance but it was with some trepidation that Stephen Jones was approached by Panto Maestro, Kendall (call me ‘Buttons’) Williams, to play the Lone Ranger with, the then Sub-Warden, Tom (Jesse) James in Beauty and the Beast II . He survived that encounter having outgunned the Sub-Warden and also remained intact for his second appearance (again under the direction of Kendall Williams) as Inspector Clouseau in the 2015 remake of Alan Din. Could the audience have imagined he would have the capacity to parody the legendary Peter Sellers? Accents, it seems, are something of a thing with Warden Jones: having taken us on a tour of the States from Boston to LA via Texas as the Lone Ranger he boldly tried his hand as a Welshman (would you believe) as Narrator in a reading of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood – a production he initiated to celebrate the

60th anniversary of the play but over which Director, Lucy Maycock felt she had ‘little control’. Mastery of the Welsh vernacular was to be put to the ultimate test in the Warden’s final role when declaring the resting place of his beloved Schitszu, that place that ends ….. gogogoch! When not engaging in alter personae , Stephen is more than happy to appear as himself. Head of Drama, David Aldred recalls his Prologue to the 2017 Caucasian Chalk Circle : ‘The Warden was secretly recruited to open the show with a speech declaring that the theatre would be converted back into a swimming pool – so convincing was he, that an audience member cried out in

The Warden as the Lone Ranger from Beauty and the Beast in 2013