Musgrove, Sydney: City academic gives his name to Kiwi theatre

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Not many sons of Derby bricklayers can boast of having a theatre named after them. But former Bemrose schoolboy, Oxford graduate and university deputy vice-chancellor Sydney Musgrove was no ordinary man – as Pat Parkin discovered.

Sydney Musgrove poses for Derby photographers, Jerome’s, in 1938, a year before he emigrated. Now he has been honoured by having a theatre named after him

A young Sydney with his wife, Marjorie, an ex-Parkfields Cedars pupil

The couple’s daughter, Judith, in 1952. She is now a professor

Professor Musgrove in 1965. He was known affectionately as Mus

A FORMER Derby man, who inspired countless New Zealanders to follow their dream of careers in the theatre, has been honoured by having a university theatre named after him.

The 105-seater Studio Theatre, which is part of the Maidment Theatre complex at Auckland University, has been renamed the Musgrove Studio Theatre as a tribute to the long and successful career of the late Professor Sydney Musgrove, formerly of Clarence Road, Derby.

A bricklayer’s son, Sydney Musgrove showed early promise as a youngster in Derby. At the age of nine, he won a scholarship to Bemrose Grammar School – two years ahead of his contemporaries.

Later he gained another scholarship which entitled him to spend a period at a summer school in Geneva. In the same year, he won the Borough Major State and Kitchener Scholarship.

He went on to study classics and English at Merton College, Oxford. After his first appointment as a lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast, he went to Australia where he was a lecturer in English and classics at the New England University College, Armidale, near Sydney.

In 1947, he moved to New Zealand to become head of the English department at Auckland University.

By the age of 32, he was already a professor of English, rising, over a career which spanned 40 years, to become the unversity’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Throughout his academic life, he was known affectionately to everyone, from top academics to the humblest student, as ‘Mus’.

Mus’s work was widely acclaimed and he was considered to be the key figure in getting the Maidment Theatre complex built and “the main energising force” behind the project, carrying out research towards its acoustics and design, and chairing the committees which set it up.

His colleagues regarded him as an eminent and larger-than-life personality – “a born performer as an actor, university orator, reader of poems and lecturer”.

Shortly after arriving in Auckland, he revived the moribund Student Drama Society, directing staff and students in various plays.

In 1963, he began the annual Summer Shakespeare series which still continues and which has launched or fostered the careers of many who have become prominent in the New Zealand theatre world.

He remained at the university until his death in 1987 at the age of 72.

At the renaming ceremony, the professor’s widow, Marjorie (nee Copestake), a former pupil of Parkfields Cedars School, Derby, unveiled a plaque watched by numerous academics, including their daughter, Professor Judith Binney.

As well as being a fine actor, Mus, she said, he was an academic, who had published books on numerous writers, including Shakespeare, Milton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T S Eliot and Robert Graves. A skilled university administrator, his lectures and tutorial classes had kindled great enthusiasm among those fortunate to be his pupils.

A message from the world-renowned New Zealand actress Lisa Harrow, an alumnus of Auckland and member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, paid great tribute to her old English professor at Auckland.

“Mus was the meteor that carried me towards my future career,” she said.

Professor Musgrove’s parents have long since died but his sister, Mrs Marion Pegg, who has always been very proud of her brother’s achievements, lives in Chepstow, Monmouthshire.

She said: “Sydney was very well known in the Derby are in his youth. I wonder whether there are any people left who remember him today.

“We are very proud of him and he certainly isn’t going to be forgotten on the other side of the world.”

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