Patricia Routledge was Edward Seckerson’s guest in the Singular Sensations series at the Charing Cross Theatre. London
Patricia Routledge talked to Edward Seckerson as part of the Singular Sensations season at the Charing Cross Theatre, London, and, after the performance, received a Living Legend award.
To most audiences around the world the name of Patricia Routledge probably means the star of the BBC television comedy series Keeping Up Appearances, in which the incorrigibly snobbish Hyacinth Bucket (“it’s pronounced Bouquet”) did her level best to live up to the manner to which she rightfully thought she was born, despite being dragged down by her ghastly family and being feared by her nervous neighbours, while she ruled the roost over her hapless husband Richard’s henpecked existence.
What many may not know is that, in her 60-year career Routledge has appeared on stage and television, in a great range of dramas and comedies, in everything from Alan Bennett and Michael Frayn, Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward to Shakespeare, Sheridan and Chekhov. Along the way she has also appeared in many musical productions, and this is the work Edward Seckerson concentrated on in the interview for his Singular Sensations series, an event that brought a capacity audience – an indication of the popularity of this great lady of the theatre.
Born in Liverpool in 1929, Routledge showed an interest in music, because when she was young, as she said: “Every parlour had a piano and we all sang.” At home her father and her uncles were all musical and they would sing Victorian ballads and the songs of the First World War. At school the piano was dragged into every class every single day, so that pupils got used to the idea of music being part of everyday life, and an important part of it too. Her teachers were marvellous and they encouraged and inspired her in her music studies. So, music became a part of her life when growing up and she developed a very good, strong and beautiful voice, as Seckerson demonstrated in his choice of the recorded music he played during the afternoon.
Routedge’s parents may have wondered when their daughter was going to settle down, marry a professional man and start a family – but she didn’t want that. Instead she wanted first of all to be a teacher, and jokingly said that she had a dream that by the time she was 40 she would be an avant garde headmistress who owned a red sports car and during the school holidays had a slew of romantic liaisons all over Europe. That didn’t come to pass but at the University of Liverpool she was involved with the dramatic society and also took part in concerts with the local music society. A professor there suggested she should take up a stage career so, after she graduated, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before launching her career at the Liverpool Playhouse.
The rest is, as they say, theatrical history, and it would appear that Routledge seems never to have been out of work, taking on theatre, films, television, radio and even opera. In her time she has been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. At Bristol Old Vic she met Julian Slade, famous for his long-running show Salad Days (more than 2000 performances from 1954) who wrote incidental music for several productions at Bristol. Routledge later appeared in Slade’s 1960 musical Follow That Girl, but that show merely ran for just over 200 performances. In 1962 she was in the cast of Little Mary Sunshine, Rick Besoyan’s parody of old-fashioned musicals and operettas like Rose Marie, which had run for more than a thousand performances Off-Broadway. In London it managed a mere 42. Virtue in Danger came next in 1963, with music by James Bernard (noted for his scores to Hammer Horror films) and a book by Paul Dehn, a screenwriter and one-time film critic. Based on John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse, it had a decent London run.
In 1968 on Broadway Routledge won a Tony Award for her role in the musical Darling of the Day. However, even with a book by Nunnally Johnson, an adaptation of Arnold Bennett’s novel Buried Alive, about a famous painter who fakes his own death, a score by Jule Styne and lyrics by EY Harburg, the show ran just 31 performances. Her co-star, Vincent Price, had never done a musical before and, as Routledge, who played the artist’s wife, says, it was tragic to see him trying to cope with working on stage after being in Hollywood for such a long time. It received its London stage premiere last March at the enterprising Union Theatre in Southwark and proved to be a jolly good show. Seckerson played Routledge’s famous 11 o’clock number ‘Not On Your Nellie’ which demonstrated just why she received her Tony Award.
Conversely, Cowardy Custard, a revue of songs by the great Coward at the Mermaid Theatre, was an immense hit in 1972, and Routledge contributed her hilarious version of ‘Marvellous Party’ – “I couldn’t have liked it more!” – a great comedy song interpreted by the mistress of the witty performance. Candide too was a real personal success for Routledge, playing The Old Woman in the Scottish Opera’s 1988 staging. Even though she admits it took a long time for her to master playing the castanets, she won an Olivier Award for her performance. She was splendid too as Nettie Fowler in the National Theatre’s 1993 production of Carousel and tells of a meeting with the show’s composer, Richard Rodgers, after he had seen Darling of the Day. He wanted to write a musical for her but, although they did meet up for a discussion, nothing materialised. Had it done, it might have been a musical on the life of Joan of Arc.
In 1976 Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner wrote 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a musical to mark the bicentenary of the White House, in which Routledge played eight parts, every First Lady from Abigail Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt. She told some highly amusing stories about the production, in that Bernstein’s aim was to compose an opera for the future but Lerner just wanted to write a musical comedy – basically they were just mismatched.
Sadly the show wasn’t a success and, after 13 previews and seven performances, it closed the same week it opened. In 1980 the actress appeared as Ruth in Joseph Papp’s Central Park staging of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, an incredibly popular show (it was free in the open air). Although she didn’t go to Broadway when it transferred, there is a DVD recording of her performance in Central Park in which she had a lot of fun.
The musical illustrations of Routledge’s recordings chosen by Seckerson included a marvellous opening number, ‘So in Love’ from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, a rich, warm interpretation that shows off her voice to perfection; two songs from Virtue in Danger; the waltz from Julian Slade’s Follow That Girl; ‘Not On Your Nellie’ and ‘That Something Extra Special’ from Darling of the Day; ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel; ‘Marvellous Party’ from Cowardy Custard; ‘Take Care of This House’ from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; and, a real treat, ‘Climb Every Mountain’, from the Music for Pleasure cover version recording of The Sound of Music which, Routledge says, she recorded for a fee of just £20 and it then sold millions.
Her own favourite musicals include My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Oliver! and Fiddler On the Roof. It was good to hear the lady on such fine and witty form and in a marathon programme (nearly three hours) she gave us the real essence of what Patricia Routledge means to the theatre and what the theatre means to her.
Following the interview Routledge was presented with a Living Legend award by the British Comedy Society, which she accepted from her Keeping Up Appearances co-star Clive Swift. This is only the fifth of such awards that have been presented to great names in British comedy, the other recipients being Ken Dodd, June Whitfield, Peter Sallis and Barry Cryer. The presentation was followed by a private reception in aid of Routledge’s chosen charity, Variety, the children’s charity.
Michael Darvell
* The next show in the current series of Singular Sensations is on Sunday 26 January at 3pm when Edward Seckerson interviews Jenna Russell who will be singing some of her favourite songs at the Charing Cross Theatre. Composer George Stiles and librettist Anthony Drewe join him on 9 March.
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