Born: 18 September, 1929, in Buxton, Derbyshire.
Died: 2 July, 2008, in London, aged 78.
WITH her animated face, bright blue eyes and rather matronly appearance Elizabeth Spriggs was ideal casting for challeng
ing ladies of a domineering manner. She had a successful career but never became a celebrity. "I don't feel bitter about that," she once admitted. "I think I am very, very fortunate that I'm so versatile and I'm lucky that at my age I'm still in demand."
Spriggs certainly had a lengthy career on stage, television and in films and appeared with many of the leading theatre companies and directed by some outstanding directors.
She encompassed leading roles in Shakespeare and Shaw and made a powerful impression in comedy. Her performances on television gained her a deserved reputation and were seen to good effect in the BBC's acclaimed Martin Chuzzlewit and three plays by Alan Bennett. She was a familiar figure to younger viewers as the witch in the children's series Simon and the Witch and in 1987 played Tabby in Dr Who opposite the Seventh doctor (Sylvester McCoy). Spriggs, a down-to-earth and no-nonsense actress, restricted her film performances but was seen in 1995 in Emma Thomson's Sense and Sensibility and then six years later played the Fat Lady in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Elizabeth Spriggs was educated at Wheatley Street High School in Coventry and had a difficult relationship with her father. She studied singing at the Royal School of Music and then taught singing in Coventry where she married at the age of 21. The marriage was not a success and Spriggs, by then recognising a determination to act, left her husband and child and started working in small roles in repertory companies, principally at Bristol and Birmingham, but also did a season with the Dundee Repertory.
Spriggs was first offered work at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1962 (The Beggar's Opera) and was a member of Peter Brook's famous ensemble in the Marat/Sade in 1964. She was wonderfully flamboyant in Clifford Williams's production of The Comedy of Errors (1965), made a startling impression as Gertrude opposite David Warner's Hamlet (1965) and a delightful Nurse to Dame Judi Dench's Juliet. But her time at the RSC was crowned in 1972 with a gloriously exuberant performance in a rediscovered comedy: Dion Boucicault's London Assurance. With Donald Sinden and Dame Judi, Spriggs set the stage alight as Lady Gay Spanker somehow remaining very ladylike but being wildly horsy and slapping her thighs with her riding whip.
In 1976, she joined Sir Peter Hall's National Theatre to play in one of their first productions in the new theatre. Madam Arcati in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (directed by Harold Pinter) was a role made for Spriggs's sparkling style and in almost a decade at the NT Spriggs played many distinguished roles, including in Arnold Wesker's Love Letters on Blue Paper (1978), which gained her an Olivier award. In 1991, she was at the Chichester Festival Theatre (in Arsenic and Old Lace) while her one appearance at an Edinburgh Festival was back in 1959 with the Birmingham Repertory.
The later stages of her career saw a flowering of her abilities on television. She had appeared in Frederic Raphael's Glittering Prizes in the Seventies but it was not until the Eighties that Spriggs made her mark on television in Shine On Harvey Moon, the comedy series set in the early post-war years. Thereafter, she was a regular in high-quality dramas like Shackleton, Middlemarch, Victoria and Albert and was a glorious nurse in the BBC's Martin Chuzzlewit. But Spriggs was often in demand for cameo roles in Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Heartbeat etc. Apart from appearances in the Harry Potter film and the Oscar-winning adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the last work she completed was in 2001, with Michael Caine, in Is There Anybody There?.
Elizabeth Spriggs's first two marriages were dissolved. She is survived by a daughter from her first marriage and Murray Manson, whom she married in 1977.
ALASDAIR STEVEN
The full article contains 683 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
