The Marionette Society

Any Old Radleian from the 1960s or 1970s, when walking down Covered Passage, will look towards the glass room at the end and quietly say, ‘That was the marionette theatre.’

The Marionette Society was the place in Radley where all the performance and creative arts came together: art, sculpture, craft skills, orchestral music, writing, mechanical design, wood working, sound engineering, lighting, acting and singing. The marionettes provided space for fantasy, ingenuity, skill and team-work.

Most productions required a minimum of three performers for each character – the operator, the speaker, and the singer – all of the cast and the technical back-stage crew squeezed into the space behind the wooden stage, using microphones for projection. It was also the place for grandeur; no other group in the school has performed Mozart’s Magic Flute with orchestra and all singing parts. And it was the place where Radley’s most celebrated alumnus gave the first public performance of his own writing when Black and White Blues with words by Peter Cook (1951, C) and music by Michael Bawtree (1951, G) was shown in 1956.

Peter Cook went on to star in the Edinburgh Festival and to apply his gift for satire to founding Private Eye, eventually being described by actor Stephen Fry as ‘the funniest man who ever lived.’ Michael Bawtree went on to an international career as a theatre director, beginning with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario. Radley College Marionettes Society wasn’t just ‘playing with puppets.’