Seeing Susan Fleetwood's costume from Cymbeline lay drying on the lawn outside the theatre before she made it real with her magic on stage - Jane Henderson, Subscriber

‘Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.’ Oh, how true. I started to visit Stratford in 1974 and since then have kept going back again and again and again … Susan Fleetwood’s magical costume from Cymbeline once lay drying on the lawn outside the theatre before she made it real with her magic on stage. Ian McKellen and Francesca Annis in Romeo and Juliet kindled the romance and the love affair has continued right up until The Boy in the Dress which was my last visit to the Memorial Theatre. I have sat through wars raging and storms brewing - of many sorts! - knowing I would be transported to many fantastical places. Imelda Staunton, Jeremy Ions and Imogen Stubbs swashbuckled their way into my heart in The Swan. Pete Postlethwaite once sat next to my husband during another performance, making him feel so much like one of the cast he worried he might not know the words… King John’s banquet meal was thrown over him on another more recent occasion. And then there was The Other Place. What joy all those plays brought, especially David Troughton doing a double act as The Venetian Twins. I can’t ignore Newcastle either. Being a Geordie, going hame for those times in the Toon were made even better with the RSC’s visits. Making me long for those visits was Alun Armstrong’s cycling Petruchio. Special events were always made even more special when for Michael Boyd’s Revolutions weekend we were privileged to take part in the audience meal when Sam Troughton and Kathryn Hunter acted as waiters! I could go on. Thank you RSC for so much and for just being there to give us so much more.