PATRICIA ROUTLEDGE

'Patricia Routledge' CBE (born 17 February 1929) is a Tony Award-winning English actress who is best known to television audiences for her role of Hyacinth Bucket in the television comedy series ''Keeping Up Appearances''.
Routledge was born Katherine Patricia Routledge in Birkenhead, Cheshire. She was educated at Birkenhead High School, an independent girls' school, and the University of Liverpool. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and launched her acting career at the Liverpool Playhouse.

Contents

Theatre

Film and television

Footnotes

External links

Theatre

Prior to ''Keeping Up Appearances'', Routledge had a prolific career in theatre, particularly musical theatre, in the UK and the US during the 1960s and 1970s ^[1]. Her West End credits include ''Little Mary Sunshine'', ''Cowardy Custard'', ''Noises Off'', ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', and ''The Solid Gold Cadillac'', as well as a number of less successful vehicles.
Routledge made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1968 musical ''Darling of the Day'', for which she won a Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical, sharing the honour with Leslie Uggams of ''Hallelujah, Baby!''. Following ''Darling of the Day'', Routledge had roles in several more unsuccessful Broadway productions, including a musical called ''Love Match'', in which she played Queen Victoria; the legendary 1976 Leonard Bernstein flop, ''1600 Pennsylvania Avenue'', in which she portrayed every First Lady from Abigail Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt; and a 1981 musical called ''Say Hello to Harvey'', based on the Mary Coyle Chase play ''Harvey'', which closed in Toronto before reaching New York.
In 1980, Routledge played Ruth in the Joseph Papp production of ''The Pirates of Penzance'' co-starring American actor Kevin Kline and Pop vocalist Linda Ronstadt, at the Delacorte Theatre in New York City's Central Park, one of the series of Shakespeare in the Park summer events. The show was a hit and transferred to Broadway the following January, but Estelle Parsons replaced Routledge. A DVD of the Central Park production, with Routledge, was released in October 2002.
She played the role of Aunt Nettie to great acclaim in the 1993 London production of ''Carousel''. In a 2006 Hampstead Theatre production of ''The Best of Friends'', based on a book by Hugh Whitemore, she portrayed Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB. The play focused on her friendships with Sir Sydney Cockerell and George Bernard Shaw.

Film and television

Routledge's screen credits include ''To Sir, with Love'' and ''Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River''.
Routledge's early television appearances, including roles in ''Coronation Street'' and several BBC drama serials, brought her little notice until the 1980s, when she appeared in both Victoria Wood's comedy series and Alan Bennett's ''Talking Heads'' series of short plays. She also appeared in the "Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" episode of Steptoe and Son in 1974.
In 1990, Routledge landed the high-profile role of Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy series ''Keeping Up Appearances''. She portrayed a former working-class woman with social pretensions (insisting her surname be pronounced "bouquet") and visions of grandeur (her often-mentioned but never-seen "candlelight suppers").
In 1996, Routledge accepted the lead in another long-running series, the mystery drama ''Hetty Wainthropp Investigates'', which co-starred rising star Dominic Monaghan as her assistant. She has also played several real-life characters on television, including Barbara Pym and Hildegard of Bingen.
In 2001, Routledge starred in ''Anybody's Nightmare'', a fact-based television drama in which she played a piano teacher who served four years in prison for murdering her elderly aunt but was acquitted following a retrial.
Her radio credits include the BBC dramatization of Carole Hayman's ''Ladies of Letters'', in which she and Prunella Scales play elderly women who exchange humorous correspondence over the course of several years.
The honour of the OBE was bestowed upon her in 1993, and in 2004, Routledge was promoted to CBE.

Footnotes

1. Patricia Routledge - Unsung Heroines, Musical Theatre.net

External links

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★ Keeping Up Appearances website

★ Unsung Heroines