Obituary: Death of teacher and Unity Theatre man Frank Wagland
Published: 18 August 2011
by DAN CARRIER
FRANK Wagland, who has died aged 83, was a key figure in the Unity Theatre group and an inspiring teacher to hundreds of children.
Frank’s talents shone from an early age. He taught himself how to read and write music before he was 11. Aged 15, he wrote his first piece of classical music, inspired by his heroes, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.
He left school at 17, and joined music publisher Boosey and Hawkes in Regent’s Street. Impressed by his musical ability, the firm offered the young pianist time in its studios to record.
According to his wife, Rita, he was asked to take a bust of conductor Henry Wood to the Royal Albert Hall.
Later, he would often visit the venue – and always point out that the Wood bust was still exactly where he left it.
After National Service in Egypt, Frank trained as a teacher at Cheltenham College. Later, as a highly successful arts and music teacher in Willesden, he filled his evenings composing, producing and performing with dramatic societies.
His politics had partly been formed by his childhood in the 1930s and the influence of his brother Edmund, who was left-wing.
When he was asked to work with the political Unity Theatre, then based in Somers Town, he found a natural home.
In 1955, Frank met his future wife Rita on the set of a Unity play, Peacemeal. They married two years later at Hampstead Registry Office, and had two sons, Simon and Mark.
At the Unity, Frank worked with songwriter Lionel Bart, who wrote the musical Oliver! Bart had ideas for melodies in his head but was not good at writing music – this was where Frank stepped in. He would make Bart’s ideas workable.
Frank composed hundreds of songs, and not only for the stage. He would film family events and then set music to them.
He wrote children’s shows, put on school productions and worked for Unity until it was burnt down in the 1970s.
All of this he did in his spare time. He still taught and he and Rita would carefully plan summer holidays far afield, including a trip to Cuba in the 1980s when Frank fell for the jazz clubs of Havana.
He avidly collected music. His family have thousands of hours of his compositions and other pieces. They are now due to be catalogued and saved before being handed over to a music library.