Patricia Routledge, the versatile actress best known for playing Hyacinth Bucket in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, has died at the age of 96. Her career spanned musicals, classics and modern drama, with a defining quality being her ability to see the humanity in eccentrics and outsiders.
Routledge's talent for humanising absurd characters was evident in her stage roles, such as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals at Manchester's Royal Exchange in 1976. Critic Irving Wardle noted she played not a grotesque dragon but a giggling, would-be merry widow. In Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, her performances as a lonely clerical worker and a letter-writing busybody demonstrated profound understanding of loners.
Her musical theatre work included a Tony award for Darling of the Day in 1968 and a memorable turn as the Old Lady in Scottish Opera's 1988 revival of Bernstein's Candide. In 1992, she sang 'You'll Never Walk Alone' in the National Theatre production of Carousel, delivering it with moving understated directness.
Routledge had a deep attachment to the Chichester Festival Theatre, appearing there in numerous productions including The Country Wife (1969), which inspired the film Shampoo, and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1999). Her range also included Queen Margaret in the RSC's Richard III and the saintly Dame Laurentia McLachlan in The Best of Friends.
Made a dame in 2017, Routledge's career was marked by a wide-ranging sympathy for humanity in all its forms. She once told Michael Parkinson that acting involved not just observing but absorbing people, a philosophy that informed her consummate performances.
