Suzy Barratt (Susannah Hitcing), 43; actress & writer
Hyfler/Rosner
June 16, 2007
Suzy Barratt
Actress, author and Times columnist whose genius for
inventing children's games won a wide and appreciative
audience
The actress Susannah Hitching developed a notable second
career writing under the name Suzy Barratt, advising parents
how to cope with the seemingly intractable complaint: "Mum,
I'm bored." So popular were the two volumes of imaginative
family games she produced with her younger sister Polly
Beard, that she and Beard were commissioned by The Times to
write an advice column for desperate parents; the latest of
which appears in the Times magazine today.
Susannah Hitching was born in 1964, the second daughter of
Francis, an editor, television producer and later author,
and Judith, a professional cook and more recently gardening
writer. Although both her parents' families came from
Warwickshire, she was brought up in Richmond, Surrey, and
attended Godolphin and Latymer School before going to the
Central School of Speech and Drama. A measure of her courage
as an actor is that one of her most notable drama school
performances - as a schizophrenic woman in the play Mary
Barnes - required her to perform a scene naked, covered in
excrement (later she was to play a headless corpse in an
episode of Inspector Morse).
After graduating from drama school, she went on to play
seasons at the Swan, Worcester, where her roles ranged from
Constanze in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus to Ratty in Wind in the
Willows; at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, where her roles
included Jill in Peter Shaffer's Equus and Natasha in
Chekhov's The Three Sisters; and at Salisbury Playhouse,
where she was a noted Nora in Ibsen's The Doll's House. In
between repertory seasons, she spent a year in Hong Kong,
acting and directing with the Not So Loud theatre company,
played in David Thacker's production of Measure for Measure
at the Young Vic, and in Peter Hall's production of Wilde's
An Ideal Husband in the West End. Her stage career was
crowned with her Viola in Twelfth Night, directed by Michael
Grandage at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.
Although her first love was stage acting, Hitching also had
an extensive television career, and her comic talents were
displayed in the spoof television news series Drop the Dead
Donkey and Ben Elton's The Man from Auntie.
Following her marriage to Joss Barratt, the photographer,
she relinquished her stage career to concentrate on raising
a family. On an Australian trip in 2001, when her first
child, Elmo, was only six months old, she discovered that
she had breast cancer. It was on a Cornish holiday during
her course of postoperative chemotherapy that she and her
sister Polly, an arts administrator, having sent a gang of
associated group of children off to play another round of
Pebble Pants (you see how many pebbles you can fit in your
pants before they start plopping out), decided to collate
the many games they had played in childhood, and invented
since, into to a how-to guide for parents wanting to resist
the twin temptations of the Game Boy and the ballet class,
but not really knowing how to play with their children.
The result was I'm Bored!, a detailed guide to more than a
hundred games, all of which could be played using day-to-day
household items, from the object-identifying Feely Tights
and Plastic Bag Rustle via variations on old favourites such
as hopscotch and hide'n'seek to the airport lounge game,
Celebrity Spotting (the idea is to spot lookalikes, but the
authors claim that, once, it really was Princess Anne).
Conveniently divided into games suitable for indoors,
outdoors, journeys and beaches, many of the games have
strict laughter-suppression rules, and are thus designed to
be easy to lose.
Deliriously reviewed, Barratt and Beard were commissioned to
produce a sequel, I'm Bored . . . Again!, also wittily
illustrated by Sam Holland, in which the games were
seasonally divided (thus restricting Floury Face and Tickly
Monster to Hallowe'en and Welly Wanging to the early
spring). Two years ago they began an advice column in The
Times Magazine, passing on handy hints for women seeking to
break the ice with their boyfriend's children ("try magic
tricks") and tips for long car journeys ("you could give
Skeletons a whirl").
After publication of the first book, Barratt and her family
moved from London to Alweston, near Sherborne in Dorset,
where she threw herself with enthusiasm into rural pursuits
and village life (she was a parish councillor). Last summer,
shortly after the birth of her second child, Connie, she
discovered that the cancer had returned, spread, and was
incurable.
Aware that Connie would have no memory of her mother,
Barratt spent her last months compiling a scrapbook of her
life for her children (emphasising the pranks and
misbehaviours of her own childhood). Determined to remain
cheerful, energetic and active for as long as she could, she
died, surrounded by her family, at her brother-in-law's
house in Spain; she was cracking jokes almost to the end.
Suzy Barratt is survived by both her parents, her sisters,
her husband and her children.
Suzy Barratt (formerly Susannah Hitching), actor and author,
was born on April 1, 1964. She died of cancer on June 8,
2007, aged 43