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MARY BOEKMAN 
Murder When Necessary In the 70s, with the theatre still a shell full of old furniture, you had to be prepared to put on a play in an odd assortment of venues. My first, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, went on in the Town Hall, with Tom Woods watching the youngsters like a hawk and glowering away at the back of the auditorium, muttering that it “needed another week’s rehearsal”. My second there was likewise a children’s play. Of both, my fond memories are of the colourful costumes, especially those made by Alan and Margaret Stevenson, and the music, as well as Alan’s superb, magical sets. The effects were sometimes bizarre – there was the bee-smoker which nearly asphyxiated John Curd in the Witch’s oven, the silhouetted cut-out witch who sped across the moon on her broomstick, only to get stuck halfway, and the dry ice which swirled around the stage at Tom Blundell’s wizardly feet.
The rugby Gym was another venue, where we did a French farce for a dinner show – I remember corsets came into it somewhere….
In the old Cue there were several farces and comedies of the eighties, when such things were straightforward fun, gently suggestive, and of course involved lots of rushing about, split timing with doors and perfect line delivery. The ‘glamour’ on stage was in stark contrast to the cramped, scruffy conditions backstage, but we had wonderful times.
Now we have the new Cue, with its comfort and technical wizardry, and a stage we could only have dreamed about thirty years ago. One play so far: ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, with exploding umbrellas and dragon mother-in-law-to-be; costume comedies are my favourites, and I hope I’ll be able to do more. Mary Boekman