Just in case anyone is planning on putting on Bugsy Malone in the round as a school play here are a few essential items for you shopping list.
Silly String: 204 cans. The marvellous DT department had designed and made 20 pretty fearsome looking MDF guns, made to resemble machine guns, but with the added feature of a silver jubilee clip. This allowed the swift loading and reloading of silly string cans during the first a second halves of the show. However great care had to be taken to try to reload in silence, especially because of the rattle thing inside to silly string cans.
Shaving Foam: 34 cans. Strangely no-one in the local Tescos supermarket batted an eye-lid when I bought the first 10 cans of shaving foam for the pies. I emptied the shelves of their value shaving foam and, having learned that I could make three large or four medium pies from each can, discovered that I needed to buy more. I cleared the shelves again. It was on my third mission to Tesco that I found they had, for some reason, run out of the cheap stuff and so I had to splash out an extra RM2 per canister for the better quality stuff. And what a difference that made! The foam held its shape better, stayed in more defined peaks on the faces of the victims and, due to its density, made a better sounding thunk as it connected with its intended's face. (It also tasted better, a vital factor.) Lesson learned? Buy the good stuff. Also note: shaving foam pies don't melt and can be made at least six hours before hand.
Trilby hats: 60. How did we get through so many? Well most of the 40-strong cast were playing more than one role and so were required to don a gangster or speakeasy customers' hat at some point. Then there were the band members who were all immaculately dressed in dark suits or dresses and, of course, trilbies.
Milo: 462* tetra packs of various sizes, plus two large bags of the powdered stuff. (* = estimate). The script called for Fat Sam to be the main seller of sasparella, a sort of sickly-sweet fizz. However this being Malaysia there is not much sasparella drunk so I had to find another comedy beverage. I asked the cast which was the funnier of two options: 100+ (a sort of after-sport fizzy liquid) or milo. The results were staggeringly in favour of milo being the funnier of the two drinks and so Fat Sam became an illicit milo dealer. The cast brought in countless containers of it as did I and all through the show key characters were supping at their illicit chocolatey brew. It also got a good laugh when Fat Sam approached her bartender colleague during a moment of despair and said "Hey Joe, fix me a milo." She waited patiently as Joe opened and poured a can lovingly into Fat Sam's favourite glass.
Cleaners: 2 in the cast and 2 real ones. Bugsy Malone is a messy show but doing it in the round actually helped to minimize audience mess as all the pies and guns were fired inwards (except during the barber's scene when the audience got a good dousing). However shaving foam is slippery stuff so I cast two reliable year elevens as cleaners to mop and brush up regularly after the undertakers, cast members not actual ones, had cleared away the stiffs. Of course though the end of the play is very messy so we made sure that we paid overtime to the school cleaners to help the cast tidy up at the end of each night.
Terrified Looking Target: 1 per show. Knuckles did her best to make her own version of a splurge gun to try to defeat her boss's enemy, Dandy Dan. In the scene when she tries out her new invention the play script suggests that Knuckles brings a target on with her. Much more fun was to drag a target out of the audience, in the form of an Assistant Head or higher. All three targets looked suitably terrified, one even managed to shake his knees dramatically. Fortunately for them Knuckles' invention back-fired, quite literally, and left her rooted to the spot while night after night grown men returned to their seats looking grateful for the applause and relieved that they were not going to have to trouble their dry-cleaner.
Old shirt and tie: 1 set. To be worn by the director on the last night of the show. This prevents favourite shirts and ties being damaged when the cast decide to use up the remaining shaving foam pies on their director.
Bars of Chocolate: 30. Used as a small thank you to all the wonderful people who helped out.