- RACHEL ROBERTS
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- A strong actress, she had a natural inclination to
musical theatre and - despite one or two mistaken attempts -
left an impression
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- A famous name, of course, but perhaps not one readily associated
with musical theatre. How wrong that is, for she was a significant
leading lady of several British musicals (she never did an American
show). Some of them may have been commercial clinkers, but they
were always of interest, and at the end of her musical career
there was one solid success.
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- Rachel Roberts was born in Llanelli, Wales, on 20 September
1927, the daughter of the Revd. Richard Rhys Roberts. At the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art she was awarded the Athene Seyler
Award for Comedy, but her subsequent theatre work didn't mark
her out for comedy playing. She made her professional debut as
Ceres in The Tempest at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1951. From Shakespeare
she graduated straight to musical theatre, giving her first London
performance (missed out in her Who's Who in the Theatre entry)
at the tiny Irving Theatre in July 1953 in a revue by Peter Croft,
Talk of the Night, with a cast that included the dancer Lionel
Blair.
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- This was swiftly followed by the leading role of the man-hungry
Mrs Winterton in Sandy Wilson's little show about an old-fashioned
boys' magazine, The Buccaneer, at the Watergate Theatre in September
1953. When the show was later revived in a new production for
London, Roberts wasn't around, her role taken up (and recorded,
in one of the most appealing of 1950s original cast LPs, by Thelma
Ruby). Later that year Roberts was in the company of the revue
At the Lyric (an apt title, for the show was staged at the Lyric
Theatre, Hammersmith), and stayed for its West End transfer to
the St. Martin's Theatre, where it was renamed Going To Town.
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- Her mercurial talents turned her again to classical theatre,
and for two years from 1954 she was with the Old Vic Company,
and then joined the distinguished Bristol Old Vic Company. Happily,
it was here that she was cast in the leading role of Iduna in
the utterly delightful Swiss musical Oh, My Papa! Bristol greeted
it with rapture. When the production was taken up for London,
the magic somehow evaporated, and when Oh, My Papa! opened at
the Garrick Theatre in July 1957 it had one of the most disastrous
of first nights from which it did not recover. Another equally
parlous experience came with another British effort. Keep Your
Hair On was the work of John Cranko and the composer John Addison
(together they had written the quirky revue Cranks), but it was
denounced by the critics when it braved the public at the Apollo
Theatre in February 1958. As Mabel Gibbs, Roberts led a fascinating
cast that included Betty Marsden and Barbara Windsor, but the
final twenty minutes of the play were inaudible through the audience's
caterwauling, and Keep Your Hair On put up after 20 performances.
- Roberts' final musical was undoubtedly her finest moment
in musical theatre, as the heroine of Lionel Bart's grand hymn
to Liverpool, Maggie May. The role of the lovable dockyard tart
had been intended for Georgia Brown, who turned down the chance
to play it. It was the audience's good fortune that Roberts got
to play it, turning in a blazing performance (although musically
she was not always accurate). The score didn't give Maggie enough
marvellous moments, but there was one high point when Maggie
sat alone in Sean Kenny's gargantuan set to sing 'The Land of
Promises'. When Roberts left the show, Georgia Brown decided
to take over. There was a long career ahead of Roberts on stage
and on film, but her career in musicals was done with. She died
in
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- Discography
Maggie May Original London cast recording
RETURN TO UNSUNG HEROINES
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