The vast, flat moss that stretches to the north of Ringinglow Road is one of the great wonders of living in Sheffield – a mighty stage for "the performance of heaven", as Yorkshire-born Ted Hughes describes such spaces in his poem Moors.
It needed to be structurally sound enough to hold the weight of the Lunar Module, Service Module, Command Module and the three astronauts during the acceleration provided by three mighty stages of rocket beneath.
From the first row of the balcony, a couple of stories high, we could see the whole vast sweep of the Barbican's mighty stage, which is spectacularly but strangely used.
An epic adaptation of four Shakespeare history plays is to be restaged for the first time since 1963 when it was hailed as "one of the mightiest stage projects of our time".
The original productions starred David Warner as Henry VI, Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret of Anjou and Ian Holm as Richard III. Bernard Levin, who thought it one of the mightiest stage projects of his time, wrote in the Daily Mail that it was "a production of epic, majestic grandeur, a landmark and a beacon in the post-war English theatre".
But the kid had a Clint Longley-like moment on a mighty big stage, so let him enjoy it.
He did just that, producing a pale, abstract city, white-tiled nunnery and mighty wooden stage machinery: the Royal Opera House would've loved it.
London Road was a mighty success on stage.
His decline is, like Lear's, acted to the accompaniment of a mighty storm: the stage-quaking sounds of German bombardment.
As one film publicist at the time put it, "From the dregs and failures of every line poured the hordes out of which was to be welded mighty moviedom". Even stage producers who might have forged useful alliances with the movies by lending their stars and material generally waited until it was too late, when the balance of power had already shifted to the studios.
