Hebburn Clegwell Boys Modern School

A class act on the stage as school boys in drag tackle Gilbert and Sullivan’s swashbuckling opera.

There’s a liberal slap of greasepaint for boys at the new Clegwell Secondary Modern School who prepare to tread the boards in bonnets for a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera, Pirates of Penzance. This silent (somewhat out of focus) Kodachrome amateur film captures the industrious fun of set design, rehearsals, and the on stage slapstick of an annual theatrical production by Hebburn pupils growing up poor in the shadow of shipyards on the Tyne.