IN FONDEST MEMORY

Patrick Bacon and Dennis Estop (d.1997)

Two links with Tin Hut days have been severed by the deaths of Dennis Estop and Patrick Bacon.

Dennis, who died in February [1997], aged 77 had been a Questor for some 45 years and was a much-loved personality. He was one of those stalwarts always there, especially when the Theatre was being built in the fifties and sixties.

Dennis joined the Student Group in the early fifties and appeared in a number of plays. He has a niche in our Hall of Fame as featuring in a photograph in The Art of Coarse Acting, playing a lunatic asylum attendant in my production of SWEENEY TODD (1964).

Patrick Bacon, whose death was announced at the AGM, appeared in many plays from the early sixties, one of his best performances being as the lawyer in Anouilh's TRAVELLERS WITHOUT LUGGAGE in 1963, when all plays were in the studio owing to imminent demolition of the Tin Hut. Also in the cast were Kit Emmet and Robin Ingram (then aged 12!)

Some years ago he moved to Norfolk, but kept his interest to the end and would drive up to visit the Questors even though into his eighties.

Michael Green

[Questopics 419, April 1997]