As she prepares for the role of Mrs Malaprop, Penelope Keith talks to Lloyd Evans, who finds her decisive, cheerful, pragmatic and modest, with a tendency to break into fits of unexpected giggles
A winter off. That’s what Penelope Keith had planned for this year. But when an opportunity arrived to play Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals she couldn’t turn it down. ‘It’s one of the great women’s parts so I thought I must have a bash at that.’
We meet in a compact, slightly unloved dressing-room in the Theatre Royal, Brighton, where she sits in light-brown slacks and a soft-pink cardigan with her back to a bright mirror festooned with good luck cards. An assistant brings me a cup of coffee and Keith instantly spots that I have nowhere to put it. She grabs a red plastic bucket and upends it in front of me. ‘There!’ She’s decisive, pragmatic and instinctively cheerful but there’s a marked degree of modesty about her, too, probably ingrained during her post-war childhood and strengthened by personal disposition.
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