Joan Plowright

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Plowright, Joan Anne (1929– ), English actress, third wife of Laurence Olivier. She made her first appearance on the stage in 1951, and in 1956 joined the English Stage Company, making an outstanding success as Margery Pinchwife in Wycherley's The Country Wife. She was also much admired as the Old Woman in Ionesco's The Chairs (1957; NY, 1958); in Osborne's The Entertainer (1957; NY, 1958); as Beatie, the working-class girl who discovers culture, in Wesker's Roots (1959); and as Daisy in Ionesco's Rhinoceros (1960), in which year she also played Josephine in Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey in New York. After a most interesting performance as Sonya in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya during the first Chichester Festival in 1962 she joined the National Theatre company at the Old Vic on its inception, playing Sonya again and also the title-role in Shaw's Saint Joan (1963), Maggie in Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, and Hilde in Ibsen's The Master Builder (both 1964). Among other parts with the National were Beatrice in Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado about Nothing, Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters (both in 1967), Portia in The Merchant of Venice (1970), and Rosa, the harassed Neapolitan mama in De Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday (1973). At the Lyric Theatre in 1975 she appeared in repertory as Arkadina in Chekhov's The Seagull and Alma in Ben Travers's The Bed before Yesterday. In 1977 she had another long run in De Filippo's Filumena (NY, 1980). Later in 1980 she returned to the West End, playing a working-class old lady in Alan Bennett's short-lived Enjoy. She was then seen in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in 1983, as Ranevskaya, Congreve's The Way of the World (Chichester and London in 1984), as Lady Wishfort, Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession at the National in 1985, and García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba (1986). Her forte is an earthy regional realism that places her characters in a precise social context with an emphasis on down-to-earth indomitability.