R.I.P. Sheila Burrell

[Reza]

Sheila Burrell obituary

A striking stage presence for more than 60 years and a familiar face on TV
Michael Coveney guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 27 July 2011 18.41 BST

Sheila Burrell, who has died aged 89 after a long
illness, was a cousin of Laurence
Olivier, and a similarly distinctive and fiery
actor with a broad, open face, high cheekbones
and expressive eyes. She stood at only 5ft 5ins
but could fill the widest stage and hold the
largest audience. Her voice was a mezzo marvel,
kittenish or growling and, in later life,
acquired the viscosity and vintage of an old ruby
port, matured after years of experience.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, she made
her name as a wild, red-headed Barbara Allen
(subject of the famous ballad) in Peter Brook's
1949 production of Dark of the Moon (Ambassadors
theatre), an American pot-boiler about the
seduction of a lusty girl by a witch boy and the
hysterical reaction of her local community.

The role remained one of her favourites, along
with Honor Klein, a ubiquitous don who made the
air shiver, according to one critic, in
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/irismurdoch>Iris
Murdoch's A Severed Head at the Criterion in 1963
(Burrell achieved minor notoriety as the first
actor to bare her breasts on the British stage),
and the angrily cursing Queen Margaret in
Shakespeare's Richard III, which she played at
Stratford-upon-Avon in 1970 in a cast also
including Norman Rodway, Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley.

Burrell who according to her son the actor
Matthew Sim had "the mouth of a sewer" was born
in Blackheath, south-east London, the daughter of
a salesman. She attended St John's school in
Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, and trained at the
Webber Douglas School, London. She started out in
1942 by entertaining the troops, in The Patsy,
followed by a West End
debut at the Prince of Wales in The Rest Is Silence.

After seasons in repertory theatres, she played
three leading roles at the Croydon theatre in
1948, all of them transferring to the Embassy in
Swiss Cottage: Gilda in Noel Coward's Design For
Living, Judy (the Margaret Sullavan role in the
MGM movie) in Keith Winter's The Shining Hour,
and Louka in George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man.

After playing Kate in The Taming of the Shrew at
the Liverpool Rep in the same year, and then
Barbara Allen, she was established, touring as
Anne Boleyn in The White Falcon in 1950 with
Basil Radford, directed by Peter Finch, and
joining the Bristol Old Vic as Goneril to Eric
Porter's first King Lear in 1956.

She featured in a couple of Hammer thrillers in
the early 1950s, followed by the Hammer
psychological horror movie Paranoiac (1963), with
Oliver Reed and Janette Scott, and in Henry
Levin's The Desperados (1969) with Jack Palance.
On television, she was a striking Lady Rochford
in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970).

Burrell joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford in 1970 (the
season included Peter Brook's now legendary A
Midsummer Night's Dream). Two of her children,
Julius and Matthew, appeared as the children of
Clarence with her in Richard III, directed by
Terry Hands, and she made a tremendous impact
with Constance's great speech in King John, directed by Buzz Goodbody.

Back in London, she appeared with Ralph
Richardson in John Osborne's West of Suez at the Royal Court in
1971, transferring to the Cambridge theatre. Her
duel with Richardson in an interview scene was,
said the director Anthony Page, the best thing in
the play: "She was tough and fiery, a really
fantastic actress. Anything you asked her to do, she could do."

She joined the National Theatre at the Old Vic in
1972 to play the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard
II, the first witch to Anthony Hopkins's Macbeth, directed by Michael Blakemore,
and Lady Sneerwell in Jonathan Miller's revival of The School for Scandal.

In 1974 she answered the call of the touring
Actors Company, newly founded by Ian
McKellen and Edward Petherbridge, and played a
string of backbone roles (a notable Agave in The
Bacchae and Mme Pernelle in Tartuffe) in a
company that included Sheila Reid, Robert
Eddison, Charles Kay and Paola Dionisotti.

Her appearances were always surprising: as a
garish Dame Purecraft in Peter Barnes's
production of Bartholomew Fair at the Roundhouse
in 1978; as a sad spinster visiting the war
graves in Danny Boyle's production of Louise
Page's Salonika in the Theatre Upstairs at the
Royal Court in 1982; as the palace
maid-of-all-work in Ionesco's Exit the King at
the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1983; and as Glenda
Jackson's spectral mother-in-law in Keith Hack's
West End revival of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude in 1984.

In the 1990s, she became a regular face on
television series such as The Bill and Casualty
and popped up with David Jason and Catherine
Zeta-Jones as Mrs Kinthley in The Darling Buds of
May. She toured as Mrs Higgins in Simon Callow's
revival of My Fair Lady with Edward Fox and Helen
Hobson in 1992 and returned to the National in
1995 to play Mrs Marriner in Anthony Page's
blistering revival of Rodney Ackland's Absolute
Hell alongside Judi Dench and Greg Hicks. She graced three decent
screen versions of classic books: John
Schlesinger's Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Franco
Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre (1996) and Phil Agland's The Woodlanders (1997).

One of Burrell's finest latter performances was,
typically, as a beleaguered but defiant,
sabre-wielding old biddy in Ayub Khan-Din's Last
Dance at Dum Dum (1999), which toured widely
after bowing at the Royal Court. The play was set
in the Anglo-Indian community in 1980s Calcutta,
and she inhabited a room full of busts of
viceroys and royal portraits, reliving the Indian
Mutiny with blood-curdling cries of "Remember Cawnpore".

Over the past decade she appeared in Heartbeat
and Holby City on television, and was the little
old lady in the Natwest commercials who complains
that her bank has been turned into a wine bar.
She was in a stellar cast, led by Michael Gambon
and Lindsay Duncan, for Stephen Poliakoff's
dynastic BBC drama Perfect Strangers (2001), and
bolstered two classy fringe revivals of Racine's
Phaedra at the Riverside Studios in 2002 and
Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba at the Orange Tree in 2003.

Burrell suffered a serious stroke two years ago.
She was married in 1944 to the actor Laurence
Payne (they later divorced), and is survived by
her second husband, the theatrical photographer
David Sim, whom she married in 1963, along with
their three children and two grandchildren.

Sheila Mary Burrell, actor, born 9 May 1922; died 19 July 2011