77/8

The production of Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, a wicked parody of all puzzle plays, was the first on the amateur stage. All the tricks in the book and two huge parts for Young and Casewell again. The Killing of Sister George faltered because the cast thought it was an easier play than it is but there was great fun at Christmas time with that old favourite, Arsenic and Old Lace, Doreen Evans and Shiela Jacobs as the murderous aunts and Stanley Barten in full cry as President Teddy Roosevelt.

In the New Year there was an unaccountable lapse with a production of an Alan Bennett play, Getting On, which the cast will want to forget. Then the ingenuities of Alan Ayckbourn's double exposure treatment in How the Other Half Loves, playing havoc with the unities of time and place. At the end of the season Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was another solid success for that team of two who have been mentioned too often. Suffice it to say that Richard Hart can go on telling his friends about the week he played Hamlet.