This page has been updated in 2026 with new information that recently came to light, showing MADS actually started 2 years earlier than previously thought ! The uncertainty is understandable as we have very little archive material from the 1920s and 1930s, but would be delighted to hear from anyone who does
Merstham Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society was founded in 1928, around the time Merstham Village Hall officially opened, but the first performance was in April 1929. The Surrey Mirror reports that Hong-Kong, a comic opera in the G&S tradition was the debut production
We haven’t yet found a record of the society actually being formed. Several of the cast of Hong-Kong are also listed as performing at the grand opening of the village hall, but MADOS is not mentioned there. One of the ladies appearing at both events was Annie Thornton. Our oldest member Diana Drysdale remembers her from the 1950s as ‘Buzz’, and has unearthed her original membership card which is clearly dated 1928
The earliest surviving programme is for Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, February 1930
It was presented ‘under the personal supervision’ of Madame Geraldine Ulmar, a retired American soprano who was also the society President. In her younger days she had performed leading roles with the D’Oyly Carte company in the US and may well have been an influence in the choice of musicals in the first years of the society
By 1932 Geraldine Ulmar had passed away, and the programme for A Damsel in Distress shows that ‘& Operatic’ had been dropped from the title to become plain MADS – it is thought that staging musicals was considered too expensive. The Society continued to present plays until activities ceased with the outbreak of war. It was re-started around 1947, by Merstham author and actress Joy Anderson and went on to become one of the foremost amateur societies in the area
MADS was a founder member of the Betchworth Drama Festival of One-act Plays (now called the Southern Counties Drama Festival) and notched up many successes in this local competition, in which the winners go forward to successive rounds culminating in the All England Theatre Festival – originally organized by the British Drama League. The high-point of this for MADS was probably 1973 when its production of Epilogue to St Joan (by George Bernard-Shaw) reached the final in Birmingham and came a close runner-up
