Jefford, Barbara Mary

Jefford, Barbara Mary (1930– ), English actress, who made her début in Brighton in 1949, and in 1950 played Isabella in Measure for Measure to Gielgud's Angelo at Stratford-upon-Avon. After further seasons at Stratford in 1951 and 1954, she appeared in the West End as Andromache in Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates (1955; NY, 1955). She was with the Old Vic company, 1956–62, establishing herself as an outstanding classical actress in roles including Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Portia in The Merchant of Venice (both 1956), Tamora in Titus Andronicus (1957), and Viola in Twelfth Night (1958). In 1960 she toured with the company as Lady Macbeth, Gwendolen Fairfax in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and Shaw's St Joan, a role in which she was particularly memorable, communicating both peasant earthiness and a radiant sense of the ineffable. She was seen as Lavinia Mannon in O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1961), and the Stepdaughter in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author (1963). In David Mercer's Ride a Cock Horse (1965) she made one of her rare excursions into modern drama. In 1976 she joined the National Theatre company, appearing as Gertrude in the initial production of Hamlet and in Marlowe's Tamburlaine; in 1977–8 she was with the Prospect company at the Old Vic. She took over Joan Plowright's part in De Filippo's Filumena (1979) in the West End, where in 1983 she was in a revival of Rattigan's The Winslow Boy. In 1989 she returned to Stratford as Volumnia in Coriolanus.