Penelope Keith, the actor famed for her classy hauteur and mischief in sitcoms such as The Good Life and To the Manor Born, has died aged 86. A colleague who worked with her in the early 1960s recalls her natural comic talent and sophisticated humour, which were evident long before her television fame.
Early Career and Comic Roots
Keith began her career at Lincoln Theatre Royal in the early 1960s. There, she displayed a rare style and assurance, once surveying a voluminous exhibition of paintings by a local artist and magisterially commenting: “Busy lady!” before sweeping out. Her mischief was also apparent at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she gained notoriety in Julius Caesar: when Mark Antony urged the citizens to lend him their ears, her voice pierced the throng with a cry of “Ave an ear then.”
She starred as an acid-tongued murderee in Francis Durbridge’s Suddenly at Home in 1971, but comedy was clearly her forte. Her breakthrough came in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests at Greenwich theatre and then the West End in 1974. As the strait-laced Sarah, she brilliantly suggested a woman whose emotions had long been buried under assiduous domesticity. One critic noted: “She can rouse the house to hilarity with the straight delivery of a line like, ‘I’ve had a lot of nervous trouble’ while polishing the dining table as she speaks.”
Television Fame and Theatrical Success
Keith’s television fame came with The Good Life, where she was memorably paired with Felicity Kendal. Kendal noted that the cast’s 50 years of repertory experience was key to the show’s success. Keith capitalised on her TV fame in theatrical hits, including Michael Frayn’s Donkeys’ Years, where she was hilarious as an Oxbridge master’s wife filled with thwarted desire. She also shone in two Shaw revivals: as a silk-trousered king’s mistress in The Apple Cart and as the eponymous heroine of The Millionairess.
Classic Roles and Beyond Comedy
A born comedian, Keith worked through many classic roles: Judith Bliss in Hay Fever, Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit, and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. But she had the capacity to go beyond comedy. Early in her career, she was impressive as one of the sexually frustrated daughters in Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. Later, she was powerful as Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, where a flicker of pain across her face mirrored her tortured soul.
On the whole, however, she avoided the icier regions of high tragedy. What we treasured was her ability to make us laugh and to suggest that under the starched conventionality of upper-class English womanhood lurked impishness, mischief, and a desire for adventure.
