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The season on tour, while the builders were in possession at Broadwaters, was nothing if not adventurous. Two of the four productions suffered because the acting areas were so big that they swallowed up many of the words. But the casts rose to the challenge of new places. St. Mary's church provided an historic background for Mother Courage, with Liz Cole in the name part, but the open spaces of the chancel roof upset the acoustics.

No such problem at Sladen School, where advance publicity for a routine Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage, (Betty Beresford as Miss Marple) was so effective that extra chairs were being carried in on the opening night. The small lecture theatre at Kidderminster College was another sort of trial for the cast of Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus. They were in touching distance of the front row and the audience walked across the stage to reach their places. The Rivals, ending the season at the Town Hall, was again beaten by the amount of space round the players. Mary Southall, magnificent in period costume as Mrs. Malaprop, would have been even more fun if her words had reached us.

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