I have to say a few words about Jennifer Phipps, who died very recently. I met her at the Shaw Festival when I was working there in the early 1980s. I had been brought in from Toronto by Christopher Newton to assistant direct, and due to my relationship with Christopher some of the actors seemed to view me with some suspicion. Not Jenny. We got to talking and I told her about my frustrations being away from my Toronto theatre company and I mentioned that I had written a play called Jungle Boy, about an incestuous relationship between a mother and a son. She immediately expressed interest: “I’d love to read it darling.” She always used that word — it always made me think of her as an old time movie star. I never thought that a big Shaw actress would be interested in acting in one of my plays; but in no time we worked it up and presented it in the Shaw lobby to an audience that was made up of an acting company somewhat bewildered by our efforts. A couple of years later I wrote a play about Cocteau called Radiguet, and I needed someone to play the role of a madwoman; Jenny enthusiastically agreed to star in the play at the tiny Poor Alex Theatre in Toronto; it was the first play that I directed Edward Roy in (of whom she was very fond).
No one has said several things that it is important to say about Jenny. She was an enormously charming, generous woman. She loved gay men; I’m not sure why, but I knew that it wasn’t just me, but the fact that I was gay, that was so attractive to her. She was an enormously talented actress, highly underestimated because she was so kind and modest (not like her old friend Joan Collins, at all!). To work with her was a lesson in acting; her work was very instinctive and real. If you put a prop anywhere near her it was in danger of being used — perhaps in ways you had never imagined, so you had to be careful! I saw her at Shaw in a definitive performance in Coward’s perfect comedy Hay Fever, and she was perfect in it, as the dotty Judith — so full of love and insanity that she kept me in stitches from the moment she walked on stage.
I had written a play for her in the 80s called Cheri (inspired by the Colette novel) which was rejected by Urjo Kareda at Tarragon. The play was lost, but when I happened to see her a couple of years ago I rewrote it for her and we tried to do it again together, but she became ill.
And this is the final thing. At one of the rehearsals for Cheri, I asked Jenny her age, and it unleashed a tempest: “Oh I don’t tell my age darling,” she said “because it’s become an issue. Because they think that someone who is 84 years old can no longer act. And it’s because I’m an old woman. It’s not fair. It doesn’t happen to old men!” Her fury frightened me somewhat but I sympathized, because I know she had struggled — despite her magnificent record at the Shaw Festival — with finding work during her last years. If anything were to come of Jenny’s death it might be that artistic directors should remember their old actors. Being old isn’t very popular these days; but Christopher Newton had a practice in his company that I truly respected; he always made a place for them, even if it was a butler, carrying a tray. We could do worse than remember them.
