From 1966 to 1978, my sister Sheila Yarwood, who has died aged 91, was the theatre critic for the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, edited by Harry Pigott-Smith (father of the actor Tim). It was said by one within Royal Shakespeare Company circles that when a new production was not well reviewed by the national press, the response was: “Let’s wait until we see what Sheila says.”
Writing mostly as Sheila Bannock, and later Sarah Eiley-Wood (a near-anagram of her name), she was highly regarded as a theatre critic, reviewing most of the plays performed in Stratford, and the regional theatres, and occasionally writing for the nationals. In 1965 in the Herald, she gave Alan Ayckbourn a rave review for his comedy Relatively Speaking, the first of his 89 plays to become a hit.
