School Play Memories

Dr Andrew McCutcheon - 1968–80

It is only with the passage of time that I fully appreciate the efforts of Mr Grime and his team, producing the School Play each year. The play was planned a year in advance after a trip to Stratford. The team of Grime, McCombe, Wilson and Woods was meticulous in preparing every detail. Three rehearsals a week lasting three hours plus individual coaching and singing lessons were crammed in from September to December. It was a great way of mixing with other year groups, a great way of seeing Shakespeare ‘coming to life’ and great FUN.

Many used the experience as a springboard to other creative careers: John Northover, Dermot Murnaghan, Dan Gordon, Tommy Beattie and Wallace McDowell. Many used it for an experience of ‘treading the boards’. Some even used it to get a ticket to the cast party!  It was a wonderful example of so many talents in Sullivan being used together: Mrs Bertenshaw’s props, Mr Wilkins’ photography, the Art Department, Mr Tregenna and Miss Gibson, everyone giving generously of their time. I had forgotten the scale of some of the productions. In the programme for Henry VIII there are over two hundred credits while technical assistance for Orlando’s famous wrestling scene in “As you Like It” is attributed to ‘Mr N. Shuker’.

I loved every minute being involved in the plays – whether it was messing about in the ‘homework!’ room (Room 1) or waiting at the back of the hall to see if Iain Fitzgerald and Stephen Thompson could deliver the line “He shoots his wit” without falling victim to yet another spoonerism. I’m sure I speak for all involved whenever I say that as the curtain fell on the last night we couldn’t wait for the auditions for the next one.

Dan Gordon – 1971-78, Actor

We moved house in 1967 to a small development at the bottom of a long established street off the Holywood Road in Belfast when I was 7. Within days of our arrival the Lady next door interrogated me on all things and demanded to know where I was going to go to Secondary School – without hesitation I told her Sullivan Upper. I remember she could barely hide her amusement – not at the name of the school – more at the audacity of a whelp like me presuming I would be invited to darken their door. Four years later I showed her the letter saying I was in.

Sullivan was everything I wanted and needed it to be. Three levels of Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, countless Scripture Union trips, half a dozen School plays, hundreds of rugby games, Geography field trips to count sand dunes in Murlough, shoppers in Bangor and potato fields at Scrabo. Cutting up a rat in Science, lighting Bunsen burners, marvelling at a Vandergraph generator and radioactive sources, having debates in English and playing the recorder and singing On Ilkley Moor Bar ’tat in Music. Exams like your ‘Junior’, single exam desks, prefects with shiny silver badges and green blazers, weird wooden climbing frames that clung to the Assembly Hall walls. The two big red velvet thrones that sat in the entrance Hall and defied you to sit, the Honours Boards adorned with names that had two middle initials, the corridors lined with black and white Shakespearean casts and the Staff corridor where angels fear to tread. The ‘old gym’ 6th form centre and the freezing swimming pool with waterproof medical toilet paper, the Grant wing and the tennis courts and the ‘temporary’ Art room, the P7 Prep out in the old Cricket Pavilion and the Headmaster’s house at the bottom of the drive and the School Song.

Of course there was daily report and could do betters, there were invitations to wait outside the door during class, there were inquiries and accusations, writing out school rules and at least one caning for ‘horseplay’. But what can I say it permeated my DNA it made me what I am – I would do it again in a heartbeat – and would do very little different. Except maybe that thing with the coffin...