Goodbye Mr Chips!
Written by James Hilton (adapted by John Scadding)
Friday 17th May 2002
Directed by John Scadding
This is James Hilton's classic tale of a gentle English schoolmaster, known to three generations of schoolboys as Mr Chips. As he looks back over his life, he recalls the boys he has taught, the men they became and the woman he loved.
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James Hilton (1900 - 1945)
Born in Leigh, James Hilton was the son of John Hilton, the headmaster of Chapel End School in Walthamstow. Hilton wrote his two most remembered books, 'Lost Horizon' and 'Goodbye, Mr Chips' while living in a rather ordinary semi in Woodford Green. The house still stands, with a blue plaque marking Hilton's residence. He was married twice, first to Alice Brown and later to Galina Kopineck. Both marriages ended in divorce. He died in Long Beach, California from liver cancer.
AdaptationJohn Scadding
John Scadding
John Scadding has been an amateur actor, director and playwright with Bench Theatre during his membership from 1972. As an actor, his first role with Bench Theatre was in John van Druten's 'I Am a Camera'. The first play produced by Bench theatre which was written by John Scadding, was Cinderella in 1975. John is a life member of Bench Theatre.
'Goodbye Mr Chips!' was written originally as a Christmas feature for a feature for a weekly newspaper in 1933 and it was immediately successful, appearing in hardback the following year. In the briefest of novels, Hilton covers the whole lifetime of a provincial schoolmaster from 1848 to 1933. By playing with the sequence of events he presents it in little fragments as if through the memory of the man himself. Almost immediately, the book was made in to a film, winning Robert Donat an Oscar for his performance. Since then the likes of John Mills and Peter O'Toole have played Chips on stage and screen, the latest one being Martin Clunes.
This monologue was an adaptation of the story by Bench member, John Scadding, for performance.
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