Drama (Mordred)

Hi Cameron,

I was in Swaziland and a member of the Swaziland Theatre Club at the same time as Richard Esterhuysen (as he then was).

We recently found a copy of the Programme for Camelot – of which I’ve scanned the front cover and main cast list for you to see. I’ve worked out that we must have done this play sometime in 1975. The play was directed by Tom Bayly and Rae Barnes. Richard was Mordred, and I got to play in many of the backstage bits and pieces as well as one of the two Trapeze people and one of the two swordsmen.

This is also a very tatty copy of the programme, I’m afraid….it looks as if we used it to keep the coffee off the set while we were building it. I understand that Richard has a copy too, but he hasn’t got a scanner!

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Richard is Richard Esterhuysen in the cast.

The Swaziland Theatre Club was an entirely amateur club which put on some truly excellent shows back then, built mainly around one charismatic director who was a local architect. I was there from mid 1974 to mid 1976, Richard’s last 18 months of school and first six months of University. I worked on two shows that Richard was in (Camelot was one of them). He was excellent in both of them and wildly enthusiastic about all things theatrical, and no-one was surprised when he went off to make a career of it.

By the way, you will notice a terrific wheeze for an amateur production here. The understudies got so good they put the show on with alternate casts. That meant everyone in town came to see the show twice! It was one we made a profit on!!

It was good fun with a great group of people.

As I recall Richard was also interested in puppets and was a pretty good puppeteer.

Best regards,

Andy Mayson (Back then, Andrew Mayson!)