Constance Chapman, actress
Hyfler/Rosner
stage
Eric Shorter, Guardian
Early in 1969, Constance Chapman, an actor with three decades of work behind
her, received a call from the Royal Court Theatre, then in its heyday as a
focus of social realism. But Chapman, who has died aged 91, had never been
on a London stage, let alone one as fashionable as the Royal Court.
Few can have waited so long for their big break. It was the premiere of
David Storey's In Celebration, directed by Lindsay Anderson, and Chapman was
cast as Mrs Shaw, the matriarch to a north-country family reassembled to
celebrate the parents' 40th wedding anniversary.
Bill Owen (of Last Of The Summer Wine) played the crusty, comical father and
proudest of miners. Whatever impact he may have made on film and television,
this play reminded us what a first-rate actor he could be, given the right
material; and the partnership he formed with Chapman was to be one of the
most memorable onstage marriages in history. What it smacked of was the
truth: misery and merriment, satisfaction and frustration, resignation and
resentment.
Within six months, Chapman and Owen were working together again at the Royal
Court, in The Contractor, another north-country family play by Storey,
directed by Anderson, with more authentic emotion for play-goers to relish.
But it was not a sequel, far from it. The Contractor - which later
transferred to the West End - was a work play. Its tone was Chekhovian.
The cast spent the evening exchanging a kind of music-hall patter and
meaningful small talk, while putting up and taking down a wedding marquee.
Owen, the contractor, was again the rueful pater- familias , with Chapman as
his wife, fancying herself a bit above him. Arm in arm, if not exactly eye
to eye, the couple were obsessed by the lives of their offspring.
For Chapman, job offers now came flooding in. In 1970, she made her first
film, The Raging Moon. By 1973, she was being directed by Anderson on film
in Oh Lucky Man, with Malcolm McDowell.
Chapman was born in Weston-super-Mare and educated at Redland high school,
Bristol. She made her debut in Noel Coward's Hay Fever at the Knightstone
Theatre, Weston-super-Mare, in May 1938; after repertory in Nottingham and
Bristol, she was with the Rapier Players at Bristol's Little Theatre
(1941-1953). For the next 14 years, she worked in radio and tele vision,
including, in 1961, an appearance in The Avengers.
In 1967, she returned to the Bristol Old Vic as old Lady Wishfort, in
Congreve's The Way Of The World. Her acting glowed. She followed this as
Lady Alconleigh, in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit Of Love, and as the fussy
mother of the anxious father in Peter Nichol's A Day In The Death Of Joe
Egg. Within a couple of seasons came the call to the Royal Court.
In the 20 years after that, Chapman reaped the benefits of being on the
dramatic map. She was Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals and Meg in The Birthday
Party (Nottingham Playhouse 1972), Ivy in Eliot's The Family Reunion for the
Royal Exchange, Manchester, which transferred to London, Phoebe in The
Entertainer (Greenwich), Aunt Juliana to Glenda Jackson's Hedda Gabler
(Aldwych and world tour 1974-1975), Marjorie in Alan Ayckbourn's Just
Between Ourselves (Queen's) and Mrs Helseth in Ibsen's Rosmersholm
(Haymarket 1977).
Among her film credits were A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg (1972), In
Celebration (1975) and Hedda (1975); and on television, she appeared in The
Three Hostages (1977), Born And Bred (1978), Rumpole Of The Bailey (1978),
All Creatures Great And Small (1978), Only Fools And Horses (1981), Our
Winnie (1982), and, finally in 1997, The Beggar Bride.
For Chapman and Owen, two decades after their Royal Court triumph, came
perhaps the finest twist of all to this tale of actors from a forgotten
generation: another invitation by the same team to act in another new play
about a northern working-class family, this time celebrating 60 years of
marriage.
Storey's The March On Russia (1989), directed by Anderson, was staged at the
National Theatre's Lyttleton auditorium long after the fashion for social
realism had passed. This couple were no more merrily married than either of
their predecessors - and no more likely to divorce. At one point, Owen's
ancient, ever-proud collier said of the 60 years, "I don't regret a minute,"
before correcting himself to add "more like 60 years of penal servitude".
The tight-lipped Chapman, ever the plump, comfortable personality, sighed
knowingly at the old sentimentalist's way with a joke. Was she, as one
critic asked, a "well-meaning harpie who has systematically demolished her
husband's dream" or was she, like him, "locked together in a union of
half-glimpsed recriminations, which each was too shy or afraid to explore"?
If she seemed cold to her husband, Chapman's acting warmed the onlooker. "It
holds hands with greatness," one critic concluded.
Chapman's marriage to Travers Cousins was dissolved. They had two sons.
Constance Chapman, actor, born March 29 1912; died August 10 2003