Spitalfields Life

It is a source of great joy to Melvyn Reeves that he has always lived within a few streets of where he was born in Stepney and that, at the centre of his personal universe in the East End, stands a gleaming Art Deco palace known as The Troxy.

In 1953, Melvyn’s mother took him at the tender age of three to see ‘Calamity Jane’ featuring Doris Day and for Melvyn it was love at first sight – encountering both The Troxy itself, with its extravagant modernist architecture, and the glamorous Hollywood stars, whose portraits line its halls today.“We used to come to The Troxy every fortnight,” Melvyn recalled fondly,“But I’ve only been in here three times since 1960 when it closed as a cinema.”

In recent years, the magnificent Troxy has been restored as a flexible events space and its ceramic frontage cleaned, so that once more it presents a shining face to Commercial Rd, creating an unmissable opportunity for Melvyn to risk a return visit to the fabled world of his childhood delight – and he generously took Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & me along too.

The Troxy opened in 1933 with a screening of ‘King Kong.’ Built at the cost of £250,000 and seating more than three and a half thousand, it offered a luxurious and sophisticated venue where all the staff wore evening dress and sprayed perfume during screenings.“If you wanted to go somewhere then The Troxy was always the place to go, it was the posh cinema compared to the other East End fleapits,” Melyvn assured me, speaking from experience and brimming with anticipation when I met him in the foyer, “My mother used to talk about how The Andrews Sisters once performed here.”

“I first came to The Troxy sixty years ago, yet I am still gobsmacked by it,” he confessed, as we entered the vast auditorium with its triumphantly-engineered curved circle that spans the width of the building without a single pillar to impede the view, “It was fifteen minutes walk from my home in Jane St, two minutes past Watney Market, and in those days there were toy shops and shops selling sweets in Commercial Rd. At half-term and school holidays, this was where you came.”

Feeling as small as ants, we walked forward beneath the balcony to reach the front of the stalls where the full height of the space became apparent, flanked with elaborate plasterwork motifs of waterfalls soaring on either side and theatrical sweeping staircases leading up towards the circle. “I’ve never been up there,” Melvyn admitted to me in a whisper, peering up into the gloom where rows of seats receded seemingly to infinity, “I’ve always been afraid of heights.” Emboldened to overcome this aversion, Melvyn and I scaled the stairs, ascending carefully like mountaineers to the top, so that Melvyn might survey the totality of his beloved Troxy and appreciate details of the plasterwork close up – such as the dense golden floral border, encrusted with daises and sunflowers, and the lisson figure of Terpsichore frolicking.

Melvyn remembers the years of decline when the Troxy operated as a bingo hall in the eighties. “My mother used to see all her neighbours coming here and say to me, ‘They’ll be short of rent money next week,” he confided to me, rolling his eyes in disapproval. Despite feeling more than a little proprietorial, Melvyn gave his blessing to the restoration including a colour scheme that casts the auditorium in tones of pale blue and lilac, highlighted with gold, conjuring the effect of a tropical undersea world.

“Whenever there is a fight night, I always see the boxers and their entourages come out of Limehouse Station at lunchtime and march down to the Troxy,” Melvyn informed me, ever-observant of all activity in the neighbourhood that he knows better than anyone else. It is not often in life that you can go back to a childhood location and not be disappointed, but Melvyn’s comment was indicative to me that now he has made his personal inspection of The Troxy and found it to his liking, he will return regularly.

Melvyn in the foyer

“it was the posh cinema…”

Golden floral border, encrusted with daises and sunflowers

Melvyn resplendent in the pink haze of the auditorium

Terpsichore

Melvyn Reeves and Clark Gable

Melvyn outside the Troxy today

The Troxy when it first opened in 1933

Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien

You may like to read my original portrait of Melvyn

Melvyn Reeves, Retired Civil Servant

“I’m old enough to know better and young enough not to care”

Despite the timbre of the message he has been wearing around his neck each Sunday at Speakers’ Corner for decades, Bob Rogers is not the lugubrious fellow you might imagine. Contrary to expectation, he wears it to cheer people up – as he explained to me when Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined him in the park on Sunday.

“It was the winter when British Rail reported ‘The Wrong Kind of Snow’ on the line and that became an Evening Standard headline. The next day, I saw ‘It’s Going to Get Worse,’ on the newsstand as I went through Piccadilly on a bus. So I jumped off and took it from the hoarding and put in my bag because I like the prose style of newspaper headlines,” he explained. “Then I came here on a Sunday in February and everyone looked so miserable that I took it out of my bag and held it up, and it made them all smile. It caught on to such an extent that I am pictured wearing it in guidebooks to London.”

A stalwart of more than half a century at Speakers’ Corner, always in his faded brown corduroy suit with a beret in winter or a bucket hat in summer, and the celebrated notice round his neck, Bob Rogers is an erudite historian and a self-appointed custodian of this celebrated British institution.“Unless I am very unwell, I always come here because it retains its function as a meeting place and you encounter people from all around the world,” he revealed to me, “I keep coming back because I know people here and they know me, so it has a social content as well as a social purpose.”

As if to illustrate this, one of Bob’s pals joined us and, realising I was doing an interview, he took the opportunity to make some points.”These days people are frightened of saying the wrong thing,” he assured me, rolling his eyes contemptuously, “It’s no longer about politics, it’s just a circus of religion – fifty seven varieties of Christianity and fifty-seven varieties of Islam and they all disagree with each other.”

The 1873 reform of the Parks Regulation Act of 1872 conferred legitimacy upon Speakers’ Corner, enshrining the right to give an address though not – as some assume – the right to free speech since speakers are still subject to the law.“I enjoy the weekly privilege of visiting the only place where people can gather without police permission,” Bob confided to me, lowering his voice and casting his gaze around,“When people ask me how many police undercover agents are in the park, I say, ‘Every third man.'”

“Over fifty years ago, I missed a connection on my bus and I looked over the railings and I saw all these people and what got me was the babble of their voices,” he continued, as we stood against the railings watching the excited crowds gathered around the speakers and the hecklers adding drama with their interruptions.“The Catholic Evidence Guild were here one hundred years ago and are here this week and that’s because this is the site of of Tyburn, the place of public executions,” Bob added, gazing through the perspective of time,“Even as we speak they are praying for the Catholic Martyrs.”

Then, swinging his arms wildly and intoning like a priest, Bob enacted the bizarre yet compelling performance style of Nutty Norman, the ‘arms-up’ man, one of the past legends of Speakers’ Corner. “You’d never know he was homeless, he carried all his possessions in a shoulder bag,” Bob revealed, protective of his mentor, “He inducted me to the night buses and sometimes he passed the night at Heathrow.” Gesturing to a charismatic speaker surrounded by an attentive gathering, Bob pointed out Heiko Khoo, a part-German-part-Icelandic ex-bus conductor who famously threw Sir Michael Joseph off his bus, declaring, “I’m not having any Tories on my bus!”

Even as Bob and I chatted, bystanders came over and formed an audience around us, in expectation of a colourful debate and making tangible the rare quality of this special place where we are free to speak with each other as humans, without the need to be introduced.

“Religious people talk about the power of God, I talk about Horse power!”

Omid Mankoo – “People’s lives are really fixated on the sex stuff and they’re neglecting everything else. I’ve written this book and I want to share my secrets.”

Matthew from St Albans – “Jesus told me to come here because the years of his blessing our nation are at an end.”

Christians praying

Christians spreading the Word

Thai people protesting against their corrupt government

Celebrating the Thai Royal Family

Proclaiming the Nigerian Messiah

“If that frightens you, give Jesus a call”

“Don’t be late like the foolish virgins”

Bob re-enacts the gestures of Nutty Norman the ‘arms-up’ man

Heiko Khoo – “I’m not having any Tories on my bus!”

Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien

Sounds from the Park, an exhibition of the history of Speakers’ Corner runs at Bishopsgate Institute until 30th April

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Moyra Peralta at Speakers’ Corner