Born Bad: Penelope Keith was an actress on stage and off stage | Theater

Penelope keith, who died at the age of 86, he is best known for portraying a villainous character in TV series such as The Good Life and To the Manor Born. But I can assure you that something of that character, honed by the high art of the comic, was within Penny herself. I first met her when I was working at Lincoln Theater Royal, where she was a member of the company, in the early 1960s. I vividly remember her browsing a large display of paintings by a local artist in the theatre, commenting wittily: “Busy lady!” and sweep out. Such looks and assurance in a 23-year-old was rare.

The negatives were also present from the beginning. A year or so later I found Penny doing small parts at the RSC where she became famous even as one of the crowd in Julius Caesar: when Mark Antony urged the citizens to lend him their ears, his voice pierced the crowd with cries of “Ave an ear then.” He went on to do great things and even starred as an acid-tongued assassin in the first play I reviewed for the Guardian, Francis Durbridge’s Suddenly Home, in 1971.

But comedy was clearly her talent and her creation was her performance in Alan Ayckborn’s The Norman Conquests at the Greenwich theater and then the West End in 1974. As the troubled Sarah who feels threatened by her promiscuous brother-in-law she made it clear that the angry woman in the house had long been buried. “He can bring joy to a house,” wrote one critic, “with a straightforward delivery of a line like, ‘I’ve had a nervous breakdown’ as he wipes the dining room table as he speaks.” Instead, he washed the silverware as if he wanted to hurt himself, much to his delight when Tom Courtenay’s Norman suggested that a dirty weekend in Bournemouth would be a lot of fun.

Felicity Kendal was also a member of the company and they hung memorably in The Good Life: as Kendal said, the fact that two of them including Richard Briers and Paul Eddington were about 50 years rep happened behind them was an important factor in the success of the show. Penny based her TV career on a number of game shows. In Donkey Age Michael Frayn was delightful as an Oxbridge master’s wife filled with thwarted desire, eloquently speaking with the heartbreaking address of a lover to the wrong man. He was impressed by two of Shaw’s classic revivals: as the silk-trousered king’s mistress in The Apple Cart he walked fast, and as the titular heroine of The Millionairess who feigns poverty in order to socialize and becomes lonely.

A born comedian, she did many of her classic roles: Judith Bliss in Hay Fever, Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. But he had the ability to go beyond humor. Early in her career she was impressive as one of the sexually frustrated daughters in Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. Later he was as powerless as Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea: when the pilot’s lover announced that he would leave her, the pain that crossed his face became a mirror of his tormented life. However, on the whole, he avoided the most difficult areas. What we loved the most was her ability to make us laugh and point out that because of the culture of English women in the upper class, there was chaos, evil and a desire to travel.