Eira Heath

Did the stage doorman know who she was?

Dark and neat, Eira Heath didn't exactly exude excitement. There was something very proper about her. She looked as if she might have just come into an office to take dictation rather than give a performance. She was proficient and professional, and it seemed - albeit very briefly - that she might make a bit of a name for herself in British musicals.

She was born at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex on 17 January 1940. She was educated at St Bernard's Convent, Westcliff, and then studied at RADA. In 1955 she played Sally in Crime Of Your Life, a musical with a libretto by Stuart Evans and music by Gwyn Arch, at Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club. The show was promoted as something different: 'it owes nothing to either The Boy Friend or Salad Days. It might be described as an attempt to create a musical comedy with the vigour that has swept across from the other side of the Atlantic, but it has an English idiom'.

She was only sixteen when she landed the supporting role of Jean in Wild Grows The Heather, a cobbled-together musicalisation of J. M. Barrie's old favourite The Little Minister, in which she made her London debut at the Hippodrome in May 1956. Her one song 'A Little Bit Of Devil' (her only recording) was pertly done, but the management of Wild Grows The Heather didn't have to pay its cast for many weeks before the closing notice went up. In November of the same year Heath appeared as Claudine in Harold Rome's epic Fanny at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. After that, she did a straight play, The Egg, at the Saville Theatre in October 1957, but it was five years before she got another musical, Vanity Fair, at the Queen's Theatre in November. It was also her last - Vanity Fair at the Queen's Theatre in November 1962.

It seemed promising to be cast as the show's second juvenile lead, Amelia Sedley, but even the show's leading lady, Frances Cuka, couldn't make much of an impression although she was playing Becky Sharp. (Perhaps nobody stood much chance of stealing the limelight from Sybil Thorndike, making her debut in musicals.) Eira Heath - perhaps inadequately armed with strong enough material (she had one solo, 'Where Is My Love?') - didn't raise the blood pressure of Vanity Fair's audiences. When Vanity Fair, abandoned by critics and patrons, closed down, so too - so far as I can trace - did Eira Heath's career, although she might still be seen (with perplexing regularity) singing songs such as 'The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery' on BBC TV's The Good Old Days. In fact, there was one last musical, a totally forgotten effort by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, Grass Roots, produced at Leatherhead Theatre Club in October 1968. Directed by Anton Rodgers, it featured Heath as Sarah, and the other cast members included Marti Webb, Stuart Damon, Bill Kerr, Neil Fitzwilliam and Apple Brook, but Grass Roots couldn't put any down - roots, that is.

It seems odd that so slight a career should have found its way into the sixteenth edition of Who's Who In The Theatre, when the stage doorman probably didn't even know who she was. But at least a few more fascinating facts may be gleaned from her entry there. Her favourite part was - no, not Jean in Wild Grows The Heather - but Yelena in Uncle Vanya, although Who's Who In The Theatre neglects to tell us where or when she played it. Her address was (and for all I know still is) Robertsbridge Abbey in Sussex. Her hobbies (for which her career in British musicals gave her plenty of time) were walking and herb growing.

Discography

Wild Grows The Heather Original London cast
Crime Of Your Life Original London Cast

 

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