We are saddened to record the death of Lilian Allman at the beginning of June.

Her first recorded appearance on the Barn stage was in J.B. Priestley’s I Have Been Here Before, in January 1947, for the Welwyn Drama Club. During the immediately following years Lilian was involved in almost every production by the Drama Club, either on stage or doing props, as Assistant Director or a backstage crew member, and she was Playreading Secretary, managing to organise nine playreadings, in 1952! She also appeared in several WDC entries at the Welwyn Festival. She became a Committee Member in 1961, and Social Secretary, holding Club parties in her garden. She also took over some box office responsibilities.

In 1968 she gave a memorable performance in Mervyn Lloyd’s production of Tennessee Williams’s Something Unspoken, and later that year was part of a vast props team in Mervyn’s 50th Anniversary production of Oh What a Lovely War. She played the lead as Madame Cot in the last WDC main house play in April 1969, Hotel Paradiso.

After the amalgamation in 1969 and the formation of the Barn Theatre Club, she played in the new Club’s first Drama Festival entry as Cynthia in The Real Inspector Hound, which won the Festival. The following year she was outstanding, playing opposite Hugh Croydon, as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which won the Herts Mercury Cyril Heath Oscar for the Best Play of the year. This was followed by many other roles, including the eponymous Lysistrata, as Ruth in Blithe Spirit and, in 1974, as Gran in The Devil in Summer, another Festival winner

Still prolific onstage and often available backstage, she was in another Festival winner in 1976 and was elected to the Club Council in 1978. Among other roles, she played: Mrs Candour in The School for Scandal (1979); Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond (1987); Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (1993); and had sessions as Membership Secretary and Housekeeper. She retired from Council in 1995.

A quiet personality but an outstanding actress, with a giggly sense of fun,

Lilian was central to the Club’s high standards. She cheerfully admitted she couldn’t sing, so kept away from musicals. Very short-sighted, she rehearsed with her glasses on, and said that when she performed without them, she assumed that everything on stage was happening just as it had in rehearsals, as she couldn’t see any way!

After dropping out of active involvement she continued to support our productions from her flat across the road in Barn Close. She will be missed by many of the older generation of Barn members.

We send our condolences to her daughter Patsy and other relatives and friends.