My friend Beryl King, who has died aged 90, was a theatrical all-rounder who broke into the theatre from secretarial school when, aged 17, she applied for a job at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and was engaged as secretary to the two heads of the school.
Her desk work declined when she was found to be adept at making stage costumes from blackout material, and before long her employers realised that they had a person of dedicated talent in the office. They awarded her a scholarship on the teachers’ course, after which she met Richard Mayes, who had joined the acting course on demob from the RAF and whom she married in 1950.
Beryl’s parents, James King, an ex-Indian Army meat buyer and his wife, Doris (nee Evans), were less than thrilled at their daughter’s attachment to an actor, even one who had flown 29 bombing missions, but they gave in when the marriage proved a roaring success. Richard was getting regular work in regional reps and Beryl moved with him, making a fresh home wherever they went.
But they were broke until – with a one-year-old daughter – Beryl was taken on as a lecturer in the drama department of Trent Park College, north London (now part of Middlesex University). She stayed there for 26 years (with time out to take an MA at York University), teaching, directing student shows (her students included the future playwright Peter Nichols and film-maker Mike Figgis), and developing the college’s new performance arts degree course.
In 1979 she left Trent and joined the theatre-in-education (TIE) team at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, where she devised a series of new adventures on historic sites. These continued after she left the Belgrade with a show at Tilbury Fort, Essex, which she took over with a company of 10-year-olds, to enact the freeing of a Scottish prisoner from British troops returning from Culloden. TIE was a move towards full-time acting, which she finally made two years later.
Mrs Malaprop, Madame Arcati and Aunt Ada Doom were some of the roles she played on the regional stage, sometimes with Richard, whom she joined for repeated engagements at the Court theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand. While there she also conducted a government survey into drama education, visiting the remotest parts of the country in a midget aircraft.
Her family was of immense importance to her, but she never retired and was auditioning and performing until the end of her life.
Richard died in 2006. Beryl is survived by their two daughters, Susan and Penny, three grandchildren, Holly, Kate and Sam, and two great-grandchildren.
