.png)
_JPG.jpg)
WHO KILLED THE DIRECTOR
28TH - 29TH March, 2025
This isn’t your typical production. We want YOU—the audience—to be part of the mystery! Unlike a traditional play, our actors won’t be memorising lines. Instead, they’ll deliver a scripted, three-act performance filled with hidden clues for you to uncover. Your job? To play detective, piece together the evidence, and solve the crime! 🕵️♂️ Get Your Thinking Caps On! During the second interval, we’ll be serving up delicious Ploughman’s Platters, giving you time to discuss theories with your table over food and drinks from our cash/card bar. And for those who crack the case? There are valuable prizes to be won! It’s a thrilling evening of intrigue, laughter, and detective work—and we’d love you to be part of it. Will you uncover the truth before the final act? 📅 Two nights only – don’t miss out!
_JPG.jpg)
MEET THE CAST
Narrator - Martin Elson
Ralph - (director of the Powder Keg Players) Rod Paddock
Prudence - (a seasoned campaigner from the Powder-Keg players) - Sue Bolden
Russ - (Prudence’s son) - Luke Hockett
Gloria - (loves acting but over-estimates her talent) - Kirstin West
Marjorie Tubbs - (businesswoman) - Lynn McCaffrey
Ron - (stage-manager) Ian Bolden
Angood - (detective) John Palmer
Meet the Producter
Sue Bolden
Normally, we post an article about the current production’s Director. However, as the title suggests, he is unfortunately dead…
So instead, we decided to take a look at our Producer – Sue Bolden.
Although this is only the second time Sue has produced a play – her first being the award-winning Entertaining Angels a couple of years ago – she has been involved with the stage ever since her teens. Acting, however, is her first love, and over the years she has played a vast number of roles, from Shakespeare to Calendar Girls (“we only stripped to the waist!”), musicals to murder mysteries, calling herself a “Jill of all trades.”
“I’m happy to play anything from crowd, chorus, or third pike carrier,” she confesses. “Or even prompt. I just love being part of a production.”
Sue’s teenage years were spent in Tunbridge Wells, where, at the age of 16, she first met her husband Ian at school. Married at 20, Sue then embarked on life as a Royal Naval wife and mother of two, moving around the country and sometimes overseas. Naval establishments are always good at putting on comedy sketches and revues, so wherever they went, they were able to be involved in productions.
In Plymouth, she joined the Plympton Wranglers, performing at the Hoe Theatre and other smaller venues. “At one, there was no passage behind the stage,” she recalls, “so to exit right and then enter next from the left, you had to leave the theatre, run around the building, and jump back through a sash window on the opposite side – often with hilarious results. It was particularly confusing one bitter winter when a play I was appearing in was set in the hot, sunny Caribbean. Imagine our surprise when my opposite number re-entered stage left… breathless and covered in snow!”
In 1988, Ian was posted to the MOD in Bath, so the Boldens uprooted from Saltash in Cornwall to Bradford-on-Avon. Naturally, the Bradfordians beckoned. Over the years, as well as playing key roles such as Hermione in A Winter’s Tale (performed in the pouring rain at Westwood Manor) and Queen Elizabeth in Richard III at Farleigh Castle (“I do love Shakespeare”), Sue was twice the Chair of the Society and remains a member.
After 25 years there, Sue and Ian decided to downsize. They moved to Holt in 2014, where they immediately joined the Holt Dramatic Society – now the Holt Players – and threw themselves into village life. Sue has been on the Committee for the past eight years, currently as the Membership Secretary, as well as serving on the Village Hall Committee and taking the Chair of the Holt Magazine. She’s a busy lady, but there is always time for acting.
Recently, for the Holt Players, Sue has played Dorcas the housekeeper, complete with a Cornish accent, in the successful production of Ladies in Lavender, and Mistress Overdone in Measure for Measure at The Glove Factory. “I seem to play lots of dotty old ladies nowadays,” she muses.
Not so – for who can forget her emotive performance as Wall in the play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, part of last year’s Shakespeare tribute The 7 Ages of Mankind? Or, indeed, as you will see her in this production: Prudence du Maurier, the flamboyant Older Woman and lynchpin of the ‘Powder-keg Players’…