Price, (Lilian) Nancy Bache

Price, (Lilian) Nancy Bache (1880–1970), English actress and theatre manager, who made her first appearance on the stage in Benson's company in 1899. She made her first success as Calypso in Stephen Phillips's Ulysses (1902), and then appeared as Rosa Dartle in Em'ly, a dramatization of Dickens's David Copperfield, and as Hilda Gunning in Pinero's Letty (both 1903). She continued to appear in a wide range of parts, but is now chiefly remembered as the founder and guiding spirit of the People's National Theatre in London, which began in 1930 and during the next few years was responsible for the production of over 50 plays, ranging from Euripides to Pirandello, and including Susan Glaspell's Alison's House (1932), Lady Precious Stream (1934), a Chinese play by S. I. Hsiung, and Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoaks (1936), in which she played for two years the part of old Adeline Whiteoaks. These were all produced at the Little Theatre, which she made her headquarters. During the Second World War she toured as Madame Popinot in Seymour Hicks and Ashley Dukes's Vintage Wine and was in Liverpool with the Old Vic company, but returned to London in 1948, making her last appearance in Eden Phillpotts's The Orange Orchard (1950).