WE MAY live far from the coast, but that hasn’t stopped people thinking about those in peril on the sea.

These pictures show some of the cast from two of the productions staged by the Lifeboat Theatre Players in Kidlington.

Inspired by mother-of-four Marie Rydin, the Players raised thousands of pounds for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

Mrs Rydin’s fundraising efforts for the charity began in the mid-1970s when carol singers dressed in Dickensian costume toured the village with collection tins.

Memory Lane this week

That led to an old-time music hall, followed by a stage production of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Patience.

Then Mrs Rydin persuaded Kidlington police sergeant Ron Angus to write a pantomime, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which ran for five performances in January 1980.

This marked the start of the Lifeboat Theatre Players and a series of successful pantomimes, music halls and other productions.

The shows often contained the unexpected. The Snow White panto, for example, featured the dwarfs’ cottage as a listed building, with plans to extend it to include an Olympic stadium and Oxford’s second airport. Another member of the cast was a rather large baby with a beard.

Members of the Gosford All Blacks’ rugby team performed as belly-dancers and ballerinas in some of the old time music halls, and as morris dancers in the Snow White production.

In 1982, the RNLI gave Mrs Rydin an award for her work for the charity.

She was presented with a statuette of a lifeboatman by Anthony Oliver, the charity’s appeals secretary, at a ceremony at Exeter Hall, Kidlington. At the same time, the Lifeboat Players handed over a cheque for £4,000.

Most of the money had been raised by the group’s latest pantomime, Cinderella.

In later years, Mrs Rydin, of Mill Street, Kidlington, ran a fancy dress business. She died after a long illness in 1991.

Any memories of the Lifeboat Theatre Players’ productions? Write and let me know.

  • Do you want alerts delivered straight to your phone via our WhatsApp service? Text NEWS or SPORT or NEWS AND SPORT, depending on which services you want, and your full name to 07767 417704. Save our number into your phone’s contacts as Oxford Mail WhatsApp and ensure you have WhatsApp installed.