A fixture of the Pukekohe theatre scene, Shady Lane talks to HELENA O’NEILL about his time as a member of Pukekohe Performing Arts and the Harrington Theatre.
I have to ask, how did you get the name Shady Lane?
I joined the Royal Navy, and they already had a Sandy Lane, they tried [calling me] Petticoat Lane but I was quite big … So they tried Shady Lane. I’ve been Shady ever since.
How did you end up in Pukekohe?
My wife is from New Zealand, and I said we would always come back to New Zealand. I was never going to stay in the United Kingdom (UK), too much of a rat race. No regrets [about] moving to Pukekohe. It was a nice small town with a small-town atmosphere, with all that you needed really.
Farmers in the high street … that was a building. There were about three shops joined
together, all different levels. You would be walking along and then fall down a ramp into the
next stage. Not ideal!
What is your favourite thing about Pukekohe?
There aren’t many things I don’t like about Pukekohe … In the past 10-15 years there’s been a lot more police sirens and we have the police helicopter hovering.
What is your favourite place in Pukekohe?
I spend most of my time in this place, the Harrington Theatre.
How did you become involved with the theatre here?
[My wife Jill] always used to be in amateur dramatics. She was a nurse training down in
Hamilton, living in Kio Kio just north of Ōtorohanga, and joined the amateur dramatic group in Te Kuiti. We lived in Plymouth in the UK, which was fortunate because it was the pre-London routine, where [productions] trialled all their new plays. We saw all the London plays before they actually opened. We were always going to those. When we came back out here Jill joined the Pukekohe Light Opera Club as it used to be called … left me at home and I decided to come down too and ended up getting involved with the technical side of things with lighting, sound, what have you.
Do you have a favourite character or a favourite show?
I think Monsieur Thénardier in Les Misérables, the barkeep. The best
innkeeper in town. I was just the understudy for that, but I did a number of shows.
Les Misérables is one of my favourite shows but also, he was a great character. It’s
an idiot. If you made any mistakes, it wasn’t out of character. I did a few shows after that and was an understudy for a few.
It was good fun. It was better fun when we had more people. These days people are very, very time-poor. When you’re putting on a show, for a two-week season, you’re doing about three months of rehearsals. When you’re doing a show, it takes a lot of energy.
What are the challenges facing theatre groups now?
Trying to get casts these days is very hard. You normally have a cast of 30-40 people, you’d be lucky to get 10-15 people including the chorus. The number of times we have tried to audition for about three shows now and not enough people turn up. Getting people to come through the door is a big challenge.
But we’re still here! There’s a gang of 10-15 permanent people, mainly the committee and a few others that keep the place running. There’s a youth theatre run out of here called the Rising Stars Youth Theatre for children aged seven to 16 years.
What do you love about theatre?
To actually be on stage and be somebody else, a different character, is magical. Playing Mr
Bumble, a character in Oliver, was a lot of fun. The theatre community is very supportive. If we can’t get enough actors, then people from other clubs will fill in. The theatre community will always chip in.
The Pukekohe Performing Arts Committee would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Shady Lane for all the work he does for the club and the Harrington Theatre premises.
He can often be found pottering around backstage building a set, painting or fixing something that has been broken, and we would be lost without him.
He is more often than not on his own, but he recognises a job needs doing and he “just gets on with it”.
Productions at the theatre would not happen without his dedication and there are not enough thank yous in the world to express our gratitude. – The PPA Committee.
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