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Please be assured that the staff of Martins Bank don’t spend ALL of their time going to extremes to be helpful at work! At play too, they really know how to
entertain and engage an audience, and under the auspices of Martins Bank
Society of the Arts, there are SIX operatic and/or dramatic societies to choose from. Martins go to extremes to put on a show, and from the 1940s
until 1980, productions are staged that showcase the talents of the Bank’s
veritable army of theatrical types, from opera singer and dramatic
actor to scene painter, carpenter and make-up artist.
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Following the Merger with Barclays, Martins Operatic Society manages
to carry on, having (sadly) dropped the word “Bank” from its title, and we
remain indebted to Mike Ellis, Geoffrey Kelly and the late Beryl Creer for
making available a number of the programmes printed for some of the post-merger
productions. We now have copies of the original programmes for all but one
of the shows from 1970 to the winding up of the Operatic Society in 1980,
and these are featured at the bottom of this page. We will try to add
information for these productions as soon as we can. There is so much material in the archive
relating to productions and performances staged over the years, it has
taken us a long time to be able to add them to this site. Menus are now available as shown below –
simply click on a leaflet – each of them takes you to a choice of
productions for you to explore!
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Whilst most good things come to and end too soon,
the singing and dancing did not in fact end for the staff of Martins Bank
as soon as they were merged into the workforce of Barclays in 1969. The
re-named Martins Operatic Society actually continued to stage ambitious
productions for a further eleven years. We have programmes for all but one
of these - the 1979 production, Die Fledermaus, (which the company staged
twice in that particular decade). If
you have a copy we could borrow for scanning, or one you can donate to the
Archive, please do get in touch with us at the usual address martinsbankarchive@btinternet.com.
In the meantime, we have made progress adding some
of the post-Martins era offerings, and you can currently choose from
SIX of the 1970s
productions - from “Bless the Bride” (1970) through to “The Gipsy Baron”
(1975). You will find them by clicking on the MARTINS BANK OPERATIC SOCIETY leaflet
above. We will add the remaining productions up to 1980 as and when we have
enough information and images.
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