Margaret Wolfit; actress daughter of Sir Donald Wolfit
Hyfler/Rosner
October 10, 2008
Margaret Wolfit: actress daughter of Sir Donald Wolfit
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4915836.ece
Jessica in The Merchant of Venice is not a highly
significant role but it takes real acting to bring it off
with conviction, and Margaret Wolfit gave it all she had.
How much did she owe to her father, the celebrated
actor-manager Sir Donald? He directed the play and acted
Shylock. It was one of his better performances, though not
to be compared with his King Lear. What made his daughter's
performance remarkable is that she was a last-minute choice
when first she played it.
Just out of drama school, Margaret was asked to replace an
actress who was ill. As a result she gave the performance of
her life, and without a moment's rehearsal. In Act II, Scene
6 she elopes from her father's house at dead of night.
Coming out of the house, Margaret found herself in complete
darkness. As she told Sir Donald Sinden years later, she
sensed that this was not quite right. She moved sideways
into a pool of light. As she began to speak, a hand came out
of the door. It pulled her back into the shadows. It was her
father's. As Shylock, Donald Wolfit was about to do the
famous scene invented by Henry Irving of being observed
returning to his devastated house.
There is no official record of her performance as she was a
stand-in, but everyone who saw it knew that they had seen an
inspired picture of Jessica's life, perhaps one of the most
striking.
Although parent and daughter never seemed particularly
close, the conjunction of their roles was unexpectedly
moving. Nowhere in the play does Shylock show tenderness
towards his daughter. In their single scene together he
merely enjoins her to lock up his possessions and not watch
the Christian revelry.
When Margaret returned to London after touring the play in
the US, Canada and Australia, she played Jessica (evidently
occasionally) at the Savoy in 1947.
She went on to play Second Lady attending the Queen in Peter
Brook's The Winter's Tale (Phoenix, 1951), Ursula in Sir
John Gielgud's Much Ado About Nothing (1951), Phoebe in As
You Like It and Lady Falconbridge in King John (Open Air
Theatre, Regent's Park). She also played Mary Magdalene in
The Wakefield Mystery Plays (Mermaid Theatre), Queen
Margaret to Alan Badel's Richard III and Lady Capulet in
Romeo and Juliet (St George's Theatre, Tufnell Park). She
also played in her adaptation of The Mill on the Floss
(Fortune Theatre), Shakespeare's Dark Lady - Who Was She?
(Purcell Room, South Bank) and a one-woman show that she
wrote George Eliot - A Portrait (Soho Poly).
She also devised and performed Octavia Hill, the Woman Who
Cared, a programme about the life of the Victorian reformer.
Other readings included Strange Contrasts, a study in family
relationships from George Eliot's Adam Bede, Felix Holt and
Daniel Deronda and I'm Going to be a Doctor, a programme
taken from the letters of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.
Margaret Wolfit was born in London in 1929 and educated at
South Hampstead High School, North London, and Queen Anne's
School, Caversham, Berkshire.
After her years at RADA she turned to rep at Guildford,
Chesterfield, Nottingham, Exeter and the Lyceum, Edinburgh.
She served the Royal Theatrical Fund for 35 years as
director, then vice-chairman until the onset of illness.
Wolfit married and divorced Stanley Amis, an architect. She
is survived by their daughter.
Margaret Wolfit, actress, was born on June 2, 1929. She died
from cancer on September 20, 2008, aged 79