Tutin, Dorothy

Tutin, Dorothy (1930– ), English actress, who made her first appearance as the young Princess Margaret in William Douglas Home's The Thistle and the Rose (1949), and was then with the Bristol Old Vic and the Old Vic in London. She first attracted attention by two brilliant performances: as Rose, a young Catholic orphan in love with a middle-aged man, in Graham Greene's The Living Room (1953), and as Sally Bowles in Van Druten's I am a Camera (1954). A year later she was a great success as St Joan in Anouilh's The Lark and as Hedvig in Ibsen's The Wild Duck. In 1958 she went to Stratford-upon-Avon, where she was an outstanding Viola in Twelfth Night and also played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Ophelia in Hamlet (all 1958), Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and Cressida in Troilus and Cressida (both 1960). Remaining with the company when it became the RSC, she gave an absorbing study of sexual frustration as Sister Jeanne in John Whiting's The Devils and added Desdemona in Othello to her gallery of Shakespearian heroines. She made her début in New York in John Barton's anthology The Hollow Crown (1963). At the Bristol Old Vic and then in London she gave a touching account of the young Queen Victoria's resilience and humour in William Francis's Portrait of a Queen (1965; NY, 1968). After Rosalind in As You Like It (1967) and Kate in Pinter's Old Times (1971) for the RSC she played Peter Pan in Barrie's play (1971 and 1972)—to which her frail, elfin looks were admirably suited—and Maggie in his What Every Woman Knows in 1974. She starred in Turgenev's A Month in the Country at Chichester in 1974 and in London for Prospect in 1975, and was Cleopatra opposite Alec McCowen's Antony for Prospect in 1977. Her roles with the National Theatre company, which she then joined, included Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, Lady Macbeth, and Lady Plyant in Congreve's The Double Dealer (all 1978), and Lady Fanciful in Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife (1980). She was later seen to advantage in Pinter's A Kind of Alaska (1985), Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), and Sondheim's A Little Night Music (Chichester and London, 1989). A sensitive actress of great charm and versatility, she suffers from the dearth of worthwhile parts for women in modern plays.