When the Wilson Barrett Company performed at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh between 1939 and 1954, their plays sometimes required an actor to perform at the piano, but not all were accomplished musicians. Step forward Mary Boag, a talented pianist who played backstage as the actor mimed.
She recalled that it remained a satisfactory arrangement until a newspaper review praised the actor’s skill at the keyboard without so much as mentioning that she was the one making the music. The actor was embarrassed and apologetic and Boag later looked back on the incident with fondness.
As the company’s work expanded to include residencies at the Alhambra Theatre in Glasgow and His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen, Boag travelled with them. She was a versatile musician, entertaining audiences with music by everyone from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven to Gilbert & Sullivan, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
Boag also performed on the clarsach, or Gaelic harp, and the harpsichord, and mastered the Gaelic and French languages. Hundreds of Scottish children took piano and violin lessons with her, many of them going on to enjoy a lifelong love of music and some even pursuing it as a career.
Mary Alexander Kellock McDonald was born in Dalkeith, southeast of Edinburgh, in 1922, the daughter of John McDonald, a bank cashier and later manager at a branch in Pilrig, and his wife Rachel, a teacher. They were both originally from Carluke. Mary’s younger brother, Alec, who played football for Hibs before working in the post office in Oxton, predeceased her.
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Mary, whose love of music was inherited from her mother, was educated at James Gillespie’s School, Edinburgh. From a young age she had piano and violin lessons at the prestigious Waddell School of Music in the city as well as taking classes in tap dancing, ballet and Highland country dancing.
Her first job was with her father at his bank in Pilrig, but she gave that up for musical studies, at first in Glasgow and later at the Royal Academy of Music in London. During the Blitz she sheltered in Underground stations, later recalling that although she was scared, there was a strong sense of community spirit.
Returning to Glasgow she became a BBC recitalist and gave several concerts in the city. She said that audiences in Glasgow were friendlier than those in Edinburgh, who were too “snobby”. The remark amused her family because she often carried herself with an air of superiority.
In the late 1940s she met Bill Boag, a geography teacher, at a dance in Dalkeith. They were married at St George’s Church, Charlotte Square, in 1949, an event recorded with a picture in the local paper and an article that read: “The bride is well known in Edinburgh as one of the two pianists who play at the Lyceum Theatre during the Wilson Barrett repertory season.”
In the 1960s the couple settled in Corstorphine, Edinburgh, and Bill, who had taken part in the 1942 Dieppe raid during the Second World War, became a military historian at the Scottish United Services Museum — now the National War Museum — at Edinburgh Castle.
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He died in the late 1980s and Mary is survived by their daughter, Judith, a retired nursery nurse. Another member of the family was Rufus, a Jack Russell terrier known as her “wee lamb”.
Putting her solo career aside, Boag taught music at George Watson’s College and Broughton High School as well as giving private piano and violin lessons. On occasions she rounded up her students into a “wee orchestra” to perform for military services at the castle. Later she encouraged her three grandchildren’s musical discoveries.
Although there were occasional visits to France, Boag preferred to holiday at St Andrew’s, where she played golf.
Boag remained fiercely independent, on one occasion storming out of a doctor’s appointment after it was suggested that she might need hearing aids. Those who knew her would probably have agreed with the doctor, but she continued to insist that there was “nothing wrong” with her hearing — rather, other people were mumbling.
Mary Boag, pianist and music teacher, was born on March 27, 1922. She died from complications of dementia on July 10, 2021, aged 99