Evans, Dame Edith Mary

Evans, Dame Edith Mary (1888–1976), distinguished English actress, who made her London début as Cressida in Poel's production of Troilus and Cressida in 1912. After further experience in London and on tour she was at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, where in 1923 she created the parts of the Serpent and the She-Ancient in Shaw's Back to Methuselah. A fine performance as Millamant in Congreve's The Way of the World at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1924 consolidated her reputation as one of the outstanding actresses of her generation. In 1925–6 she was at the Old Vic, playing Rosalind in As You Like It, Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew, and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, all parts she was to repeat successfully in later years. She was seen in her only Ibsen role, Rebecca West in Rosmersholm, in 1926, and a year later she returned to Restoration comedy as Mrs Sullen in Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem. In 1929 (NY, 1931) she scored a great success in Reginald Berkeley's The Lady with the Lamp, playing Florence Nightingale, also creating at the Malvern Festival the role of Orinthia in Shaw's The Apple Cart and playing Lady Utterword in a revival of his Heartbreak House. She returned to the Old Vic in 1932, playing Emilia in Othello and Viola in Twelfth Night, and was then in a series of new plays, including Evensong (1932; NY, 1933) by Edward Knoblock and Beverley Nichols; Emlyn Williams's The Late Christopher Bean (1933); Norman Ginsbury's Viceroy Sarah (1934); and Rodney Ackland's The Old Ladies (1935), based on a novel by Hugh Walpole. In 1936 she was seen as Arkadina in Komisarjevsky's production of Chekhov's The Seagull, and with the Old Vic company played Lady Fidget in Wycherley's The Country Wife, which was followed in 1937 by Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew to the Petruchio of Leslie Banks and a long run in St John Ervine's Robert's Wife. In 1939 she first played her most famous role, Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, in which her beautifully modulated voice was used to excellent comic effect. During the Second World War she was in Van Druten's Old Acquaintance (1941) and again in Shaw's Heartbreak House in 1943, this time as Hesione Hushabye. She proved an excellent Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals (1945) and a superb Katerina Ivanovna in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1946), though Shakespeare's Cleopatra (also 1946) was outside her natural range. Her ‘old peeled wall’ of a Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World (1948), again with the Old Vic, was as outstanding as her earlier Millamant, and she was much admired, in the same year, as Ranevskaya in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. In her sixties new plays provided her with some of her finest roles—Lady Pitts in Bridie's Daphne Laureola (1949; NY, 1950); Helen Lancaster in N. C. Hunter's Waters of the Moon (1951); Countess Rosmarin in Fry's The Dark is Light Enough (1954); and Mrs St Maugham in Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden (1956). In 1958 she was at the Old Vic to play Queen Katharine in Henry VIII, and in 1959 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as the Countess of Rousillon in All's Well that Ends Well. She returned to modern drama with Bolt's Gentle Jack (1963), Enid Bagnold's The Chinese Prime Minister (1965), and Anouilh's Dear Antoine (Chichester, 1971), and made her last appearance on the stage at the Haymarket Theatre in 1974 in a programme entitled Edith Evans…and Friends.