Patricia Routledge

Early life and education

Routledge was born in Tranmere, Birkenhead, Cheshire, to parents Catherine (nee Perry) and Isaac Routledge. Her father was a haberdasher and during the Second World War, the family lived weeks at a time in the basement of her father's shop.

She was educated at Mersey Park Primary School, Birkenhead High School, now a state-funded Academy school, and the University of Liverpool. At Liverpool she graduated with Honours in English Language and Literature and was not on a path to pursue an acting career. She was, however, involved in the university's dramatic society, where she worked closely with the academic Edmund Colledge, who both directed and acted in several of the society's productions. It was Colledge who persuaded her to pursue an acting career. After graduating from Liverpool, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and launched her acting career at the Liverpool Playhouse.

Theatre

Routledge has had a prolific career in theatre, particularly musical theatre, in the United Kingdom and the United States. She has been a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), appearing in such acclaimed productions as the 1983 Richard III, which starred Antony Sher in the title role. Her West End credits include Little Mary Sunshine, Cowardy Custard, Virtue in Danger, Noises Off, The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Solid Gold Cadillac, as well as a number of less successful vehicles. A classically trained singer, she has occasionally made forays into operetta including taking the title role in an acclaimed production of Jacques Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein at the 1978 Camden Festival.

Routledge made her Broadway debut in Roger Milner's outrageous comedy, How's the World Treating You? in 1966, returning in the short-lived 1968 musical Darling of the Day, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, sharing the honour with Leslie Uggams of Hallelujah, Baby! Following this, 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 U.S. First Lady from Abigail Adams to Eleanor Roosevelt; and a 1981 musical, Say Hello to Harvey – based on the Mary Coyle Chase play Harvey (1944)  – 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 a series of Shakespeare in the Park summer events. The show was a hit and transferred to Broadway the following January, with Estelle Parsons replacing Routledge. A DVD of the Central Park production, with Routledge, was released in October 2002. She also performed in Facade at New York's Carnegie Recital Hall.

Routledge won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1988 for her portrayal of the Old Lady in Leonard Bernstein's Candide in the London cast of the critically acclaimed Scottish Opera production. She also played the role of Nettie Fowler to great acclaim in the 1993 London production of Carousel. In a 2006 Hampstead Theatre production of The Best of Friends, she portrayed Dame Laurentia McLachlan. In 2008, she played Queen Mary in Royce Ryton's play Crown Matrimonial. More recent work include the narrator in The Carnival of the Animals with the Nash Ensemble in 2010 the role of Myra Hess in the play Admission: One Shilling in 2011 and Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2014.

Film and television

Routledge's screen credits include To Sir, with Love (1967), Pretty Polly (1967), 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968), The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968), Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968), If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) and Girl Stroke Boy (1971).

Routledge's early television appearances included a role in Steptoe and Son, in the episode "Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" (1974), as a clairvoyant called Madame Fontana. She also appeared in Coronation Street, and as a white witch in Doctor at Large (1971). Also in 1971, Routledge played Mrs. Jennings in the BBC mini-series production of Sense and Sensibility. However, she did not come to prominence on television until she featured in monologues written for her by Alan Bennett from 1978 (A Visit from Miss Protheroe), and later Victoria Wood in the 1980s. She first appeared in Alan Bennett's A Woman of No Importance in 1982, and then as the opinionated Kitty in Victoria Wood as Seen on TV in 1985. She performed two further monologues in Bennett's Talking Heads in 1987 and 1998. Routledge was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for the monologue "A Lady of Letters".

In 1990, Routledge was cast as Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy series Keeping Up Appearances. She portrayed a formerly working-class woman with social pretensions (insisting her surname be pronounced "bouquet") and delusions of grandeur (her oft-mentioned "candlelight suppers"). Routledge delighted in portraying Hyacinth, as she claimed she couldn't stand people like her in real life. In 1991, she won a British Comedy Award for her portrayal, and she was later nominated for two BAFTA TV Awards in 1992 and 1993. The series ended at Routledge's request in 1995.

In 1995, Routledge accepted the lead in another long-running series, playing Hetty Wainthropp in the mystery drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, co-starring rising star Dominic Monaghan as her assistant and Derek Benfield as her husband. It first aired in January 1996, and ran until the autumn of 1998, with one special episode in 1999.

She has also played several real-life characters for television, including Barbara Pym, and, in a dramatised BBC Omnibus biographical documentary of 1994, 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.

Radio and audio books

Routledge's extensive radio credits include several Alan Bennett plays and the BBC dramatisation of Carole Hayman's Ladies of Letters, in which she and Prunella Scales play retired women exchanging humorous correspondence over the course of several years. A tenth series of Ladies of Letters premiered on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.

Radio work prior to 1985 included Private Lives, Present Laughter, The Cherry Orchard, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland and The Fountain Overflows.

Having a distinctive voice, Routledge has also recorded and released a variety of audiobooks including unabridged readings of Wuthering Heights and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and abridged novelisations of the Hetty Wainthropp series.

In 1966, she sang the role of Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, the title role in Iolanthe, and Melissa in Princess Ida, in a series of BBC Radio Gilbert and Sullivan recordings. She took part in a studio broadcast of Tchaikovsky's opera Vakula the Smith (narrating excerpts from the work by Gogol) in 1989. In 2006, she was featured in a programme of the "Stage and Screen" series on Radio 3.

Records

In 1975, RCA released a solo album Presenting Patricia Routledge Singing the Classics. She sang songs from among others Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter and Noel Coward. In 1996, it was released on CD by Camden Records.

Routledge featured as the Mother Abbess on an album version of 'The Sound of Music' released in 1966 by MFP (Music for Pleasure; MFP1255).

Personal life

Routledge has never married, has no children, and as of June 2008 resides in Chichester, West Sussex and regularly worships at Chichester Cathedral.

She was appointed OBE in 1993 and CBE in 2004. As of July 2012, she was a patron of the Beatrix Potter Society.

In 2008, Routledge received a Doctor of Letters degree from Lancaster University for her contribution to drama and theatre.