Constance Chapman

Character actress with an impressive range of stage, television and film roles

Constance Chapman, actress: born Weston-super-Mare, Somerset 29 March 1912; married Travers Cousins (two sons; marriage dissolved); died Bristol 10 August 2003.

A distinguished career spanning more than half a century was at its halfway mark before Constance Chapman made her first London appearance, when her memorable performance as the working-class matriarch of In Celebration (Royal Court, 1969) launched her association with the dramatist David Storey, the director Lindsay Anderson and, as her stage-husband, the actor Bill Owen.

Prior to her London début Chapman had been a pillar of the repertory movement; aptly in the light of her West Country background she was most closely associated with both the Old Vic and the Enterprising Rapier Players in Bristol. Her work covered an impressive range, from performances in high comedy to those in new work, including the disapproving grandmother in Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Bristol Old Vic, 1968).

Chapman was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, in 1912, and after education at Redland High School in Bristol and at local drama college, she made her first professional appearance at the Knightstone Theatre in Noël Coward's Hay Fever (1938).

Most of her early theatre work was in Bristol. She appeared many times for the Rapier Players, based in the city's Little Theatre, between 1941 and 1953. She also married in Bristol; her less-than-idyllic marriage - her husband Travers Cousins developed problems with alcohol - undoubtedly helped charge subsequent performances of women in often difficult marriages. Broadcasting, at a time when Bristol's radio-drama output could provide regular work, and occasional television roles, became the main focus of her career while she raised the two sons of the marriage (which eventually was dissolved).

When her children were older, Chapman returned most frequently to the stage; her Lady Wishfort in Congreve's The Way of the World, lamenting her resemblance to "an old, peel'd wall" but still gloriously game for the chase, is still vividly remembered, as is a performance of stylish aplomb as Lady Alconleigh in a musical version of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love (both at the Bristol Old Vic in 1967).

The West Country Chapman and the Cockney-born Bill Owen appeared for the first time together to great effect in In Celebration as a northern couple, the Shaws, celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with their three sons. Chapman surprised many metropolitan critics unfamiliar with her work with her performance of unerring, unsentimental truth as the loyal but clear-eyed wife.

Later that year Chapman and Owen were back in Sloane Square, again for Storey and Anderson in The Contractor (Royal Court and Fortune, 1969). Although the physical action - the erection on-stage of a wedding marquee takes up long stretches of the play - came in for much attention, the production's linchpin was the seamless playing of Chapman and Owen. As Mrs Ewbank, Chapman was a warmer character than Mrs Shaw, but she found too a rewarding vein of understated comedy, just touching on the caustic, in her reactions to a husband who has taken her support for granted for years.

With her career now even more solidly established, Chapman took on an increasing amount of work on television (including Peter Nichols's The Gorge, 1968) and on screen (her effective début was in Bryan Forbes's The Raging Moon, 1970).

In the theatre she continued to work in London but also happily on occasion returned to regional theatre, giving memorable performances at Nottingham Playhouse, including a hilariously addled Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals and a Meg of fussily smothering maternal solicitude in The Birthday Party (both 1972). Chapman was also part of a formidable cast, playing Ivy, one of the basilisk Monchensey women, in a revival of T.S. Eliot's The Family Reunion (Manchester, Theatre 69, 1973), superbly directed by Michael Elliott, a triumphant fusion of Argos and England.

In London, Chapman was part of another splendid theatrical marriage when playing the stoically long-suffering Phoebe to Max Wall's Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer (Greenwich, 1974), although the author's own production was lamentably slack. She was also in redoubtable form in Alan Ayckbourn's Just Between Ourselves (Queen's, 1977) as Marjorie, the dragon mother-in-law, deeply disapproving of Vera, a well-meaning daughter-in-law driven eventually into catatonic withdrawal (literally - refusing to sit in her own home even in winter) by her husband's blissful insensitivity to his mother's manoeuvres. Chapman, pinched and thin-voiced in the early scenes, seemed as the play progressed to bloom and glow as Vera contrastingly shrivelled. It was a very funny, but also chillingly macabre, portrayal.

Chapman played a pitch-perfect Aunt Julie in Hedda Gabler (Aldwych and world tour, 1974-75) for the RSC, although Trevor Nunn's production was not much enhanced by its relentlessly dour star, Glenda Jackson. A more rewarding Ibsenite supporting role came her way with Mrs Helseth in Rosmersholm (Haymarket, 1977) with Claire Bloom and Daniel Massey.

Chapman's last major theatre appearance saw her reunite for the third time in collaboration with Storey, Anderson and Owen. In The March on Russia (National Theatre, 1989), Storey once more turned to the Shaws of In Celebration (now celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary) and although the delicate nuances of the play were not ideally housed in the chilly cavern of the Lyttleton Theatre, the truth of the direct, unfussy acting of Chapman and Owen, suggesting still-smouldering resentments alongside a taciturnly acknowledged kind of love, was haunting in its moving suggestions of unexpected wonder at the mysteries of marital and familial relationships.

Alan Strachan