barbara jefford obituary

Actor who exuded intensity and stillness on stage in a vast range of Shakespearean roles. Elspeth Graham in "The Killing of Mr Toad", by, Lucia in "Queen Lucia" & "Lucia in London", adapted by. We are not aware of any GoFundMe set up for Barbara yet. Jefford died on 12 September 2020, at the age of 90. In 1977 she was also awarded the Jubilee Festival Medal. After Andromache opposite Michael Redgrave in Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates (translated by Christopher Fry) at the Apollo in 1955, she began a five-year stint at the Old Vic, ending with Lavinia (“superbly suggesting rats at work beneath a smooth white surface,” said one critic) in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra in 1961 and a US tour as Lady Macbeth, as well as Saint Joan. She played three more seasons at Stratford: she was the Queen of France to Richard Burton’s break-out Henry V in 1951 and toured with Anthony Quayle’s company to Australia and New Zealand in 1953-54 as Desdemona, Rosalind, and Lady Percy in Henry IV. Barbara Jefford obituary. She attended the Hartly-Hodder School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal. At this time, though, she began to feel out of step with current trends and fashions in theatre: “There isn’t the same eagerness to go straight for things, to offer an interpretation of a classic that is bold, straightforward, even obvious … you can only play Shakespeare when you have reached a certain stage of technical expertise. You think, oh dear.”. There was a final rerun of Queen Margaret for Kenneth Branagh’s Richard III at the Sheffield Crucible in 2002, a Simon Gray play, The Old Masters, with Edward Fox and Peter Bowles, at the Comedy in 2004 and a magisterial valedictory as Mrs Higgins at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and the Old Vic, in Hall’s superb 2007 revival of Shaw’s Pygmalion, with Tim Pigott-Smith and Michelle Dockery. You think, oh dear.”. Her first marriage, to the actor Terence Longdon, ended in divorce. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. In 1978 she played Gertrude to Derek Jacobi's Hamlet. How can Furiosa expand on Max Max: Fury Road's brutal feminist polemic? Actor who exuded intensity and stillness on stage in a vast range of Shakespearean roles. She formed a fruitful working relationship with Frank Hauser, director of the Oxford Playhouse in the 60s, for whom she played Lina Szczepanowska in Shaw’s Misalliance, Dora Doulebov in Camus’s The Just, Cleopatra, Racine’s Phèdre and Irma in Jean Genet’s The Balcony. When Jefford was appointed OBE in 1965, she was at that time the youngest ever civilian recipient of the honour. She adorned Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999), Terence Davies’s The Deep Blue Sea (2011) and Stephen Frears’s Philomena (2013). Maria Lvovna Dzerzinskaya in "The Stalin Sonata" by David Zane Mairowitz, BBC Radio 4 1 August 1989; Giles Cooper Award Winner. She then obligingly repeated her Duchess of York and Queen Margaret for a 1988-89 season at the Phoenix starring Derek Jacobi as both Richard II and Richard III, directed by Clifford Williams, but this was old-style Old Vic, dated and dusty. Barbara Jefford was a much-loved and respected stage actor, known for her gritty classical roles as Phèdre, Cleopatra, Volumnia, Hedda Gabler and Lady Macbeth Read full article: Obituary: Barbara Jefford...→ . She re-joined Kent in an Almeida theatre season at the Gainsborough Studios in 2000, once again as the Duchess of York, and as Volumnia, to Fiennes’s tremendous double of Richard II and Coriolanus. Her first marriage, to the actor Terence Longdon, ended in divorce. Barbara Jefford obituary . Tamora in Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", BBC Radio 3 28 October 1973. Mary Barbara Jefford, OBE (26 July 1930 – 12 September 2020) was a British actress, best known for her theatrical performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and the National Theatre and her role as Molly Bloom in the 1967 film of James Joyce's Ulysses. pic.twitter.com/1HUPwcyopc, — chuck e kramer (@charlesekramer2) September 15, 2020, RIP to another theatrical great, the wondrous Barbara Jefford. I remember her fondly Judy. Her first major film role was as Molly Bloom in Ulysses (1967), for which she was nominated for a British Academy Award. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. She was not involved in the early days of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, partly because she had played all the great roles open to her before they were launched, but a new London audience discovered her matchless power and dignity when she took over as Gertrude from Angela Lansbury to Albert Finney’s Hamlet at the National in 1975 and partnered him, too, as Zabina in Peter Hall’s magnificent 1976 revival of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Molly Bloom actress, Barbara Jefford died at the age of 90 with family, friends and loved ones left in total devastation,  Our prayers, thoughts condolences are with the loved ones of the deceased for the great loss. [1] She was brought up in West Country and attended Weirfield School in Taunton, Somerset. In 1959, she appeared as Ophelia in a TV production of Hamlet. As she matured, she acquired a majesty and a grandeur that most critical writing about her performances noted, as she blazingly personified Tamora, Queen of the Goths, in Titus Andronicus and was the most possessed Saint Joan since Sybil Thorndike’s introduction of the role in 1924, throughout the UK and on tour in Russia at the start of the 60s. In 2013, she played Sister Hildegard, a small but crucial part, in Stephen Frears's Philomena with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Two minutes is an eternity of silence, and that’s what she sometimes commanded. Jefford entered a period with Frank Hauser's Oxford Playhouse which included the first of her three Cleopatras, Racine's Phèdre and Lina in Misalliance which transferred to the Criterion Theatre. Nairee English Obituary | Nairee English Death – What Happened To Nairee English ? In that distant decade, she played every Shakespearean female role going, from Imogen and Portia to Beatrice, Rosalind and Desdemona.It was reckoned that she appeared in all but four of his three dozen plays. target_type: 'mix' The glory days of Barbara Jefford, who has died aged 90, as the leading classical actor of her generation at the Old Vic, came in the 1950s. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Barbara Jefford obituary Classical actress who excelled in Wilde, Shaw and Shakespeare and played Molly Bloom in a racy film adaptation of Ulysses Wednesday September 16 2020, 12.01am , The Times Many of these productions toured the United States, the USSR, the Middle East and Europe. So often you will see very young actors who look divine. And he asked her, as she knelt before the Duke to plead pardon for Angelo, whom she had “bed-tricked” in order to save her condemned brother, to hold a pause for as long as the audience would allow. She returned to the West End in 1963 to open the new May Fair theatre with Ralph Richardson in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and in David Mercer’s Ride a Cock Horse (1965) at the Piccadilly, co-starring Peter O’Toole, Wendy Craig and Siân Phillips in a red raw comedy of an insecure writer, his wife and two mistresses. This was followed by A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968), The Bofors Gun (1968), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and Lust for a Vampire (1971). Tap ‘Menu’ and then ‘Times Radio’ to listen to the latest well-informed debate, expert analysis and breaking news. This page was last edited on 21 September 2020, at 18:17. She also played Gwendoline in "The Importance of Being Earnest", Beatrice in Shelley's The Cenci and Joan in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, emulating her mentor and friend, Dame Sybil Thorndike. Sybil Thorndike’s introduction of the role in 1924. These include Journey to the Unknown, which also aired in the US, in 1968; Walter and June (1986); Porterhouse Blue (1987); Mrs Herriton in Where Angels Fear to Tread (Charles Sturridge, 1991); The House of Eliott (1991); Midsomer Murders (2000, 2009) and Madame Bovary (2000). Barbara Jefford obituary. She was not involved in the early days of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, partly because she had played all the great roles open to her before they were launched, but a new London audience discovered her matchless power and dignity when she took over as Gertrude from Angela Lansbury to Albert Finney’s Hamlet at the National in 1975 and partnered him, too, as Zabina in Peter Hall’s magnificent 1976 revival of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. Barbara Mary Jefford was born on July 26, 1930, and died on September 12, 2020. Rudman’s company included two new faces – Ralph Fiennes and Lesley Sharp – as well as Richard Pasco, Alec McCowen and Robin Bailey, and they all shone in Brian Friel’s Fathers and Sons, adapted from Turgenev. She appeared with Judi Dench in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1959, played a vivid Gertrude opposite Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet in 1978, and was an acclaimed Mrs Higgins in Peter Hall’s production of Pygmalion in 2007. #obituary Required fields are marked *. “Whenever I do poems in recitals,” said Jefford, “I can still hear her advice, her instructions, her orders.” She then trained at Rada in London, where she won the Bancroft gold medal. She was married to the actor Terence Longdon from 1953-60, … Barbara Jefford, right, as Mrs Higgins, with Tim Pigott-Smith (Henry Higgins) and Michelle Dockery (Eliza Doolittle) in a 2008 Old Vic production of Pygmalion, directed by Peter Hall. Her London debut came at the Q theatre in a stage version of Ingmar Bergman’s Frenzy in which she played the Mai Zetterling role (“I wore a plastic mac to show I was a prostitute”). Thomas Otway's "Venice Preserved", BBC Third Programme 10 August 1960; with Donald Wolfit. container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails', Obituary: Barbara Jefford. _taboola.push({ She played Magda Goebbels in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973). And he asked her, as she knelt before the Duke to plead pardon for Angelo, whom she had “bed-tricked” in order to save her condemned brother, to hold a pause for as long as the audience would allow. Millie Crocker-Harris in "The Browning Version" by Terence Rattigan, BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play 26 June 1981; with Nigel Stock. Ten years later, in 1998, she joined a far more exciting West End season at the Albery (now the Noël Coward) for Jonathan Kent’s double-header of Racine, playing Oenone, a confidante of steel and ice, to Diana Rigg’s Phèdre (translated by Ted Hughes), and Albina in Britannicus, with Toby Stephens as a livid, unpredictable young Nero on the rise. Cleopatra in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra", BBC Radio 4 2 May 1981. Then they open their little traps. She formed a fruitful working relationship with Frank Hauser, director of the Oxford Playhouse in the 60s, for whom she played Lina Szczepanowska in Shaw’s Misalliance, Dora Doulebov in Camus’s The Just, Cleopatra, Racine’s Phèdre and Irma in Jean Genet’s The Balcony. She toured extensively abroad in a recital programme, The Labours of Love, with her second husband, the actor John Turner, who was also Antony to her Cleopatra in Dryden’s All For Love, a glittering 1977 production at the Old Vic, again directed by Hauser, in which she miraculously combined a fish-wife swagger with a noble jaw in an unjustly forgotten classic. She was educated at Weirfield school, Taunton, where she excelled in verse-speaking competitions before being taught elocution by Eileen Hartley at her studio in Bristol. Registered in England No. June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). Barbara Jefford obituary . Other films include Nelly's Version (1983), Fellini's And the Ship Sails On (E la nave va) (1983), Claudia (1985), When the Whales Came (1989), The Saint, Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999) and Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea.

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