Patricia Routledge, Celebrated Actress, Dies at 96

Patricia Routledge, the Tony Award-winning British actress and singer known for bringing dignity to roles such as Lady Bracknell, English monarchs, and a pretentious, pratfall-prone English housewife, died on October 3 in Chichester, England. She was 96. Her agent, Max Massenbach, said she died in her sleep after a short illness.

Iconic Role as Hyacinth Bucket

Routledge was best known in Britain as Hyacinth Bucket, the relentless social climber on the BBC comedy series Keeping Up Appearances. From the start, however, she was an acclaimed stage performer. She won a Tony for best actress in a musical for her 1968 Broadway performance in Darling Of The Day (tied with Leslie Uggams for Hallelujah, Baby!), and its British equivalent, the Laurence Olivier Award, as the Old Lady in a 1988 production of Candide at the Old Vic in London. Critics were often enthusiastic in their praise. Writing in The New York Times about Darling Of The Day, Walter Kerr described Routledge’s performance as the well-to-do widow Alice Challice as “the most spectacular, most scrumptious, most embraceable musical comedy debut since Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence came to this country as a package.”

Fans might have said something similar about Routledge’s work in Keeping Up Appearances, which aired in Britain from 1990 to 1995 and on American TV starting in 1993. Her character was a stout, snobby, middle-aged suburbanite fond of pearls and floral dresses who aspired to higher social status. She objected to her husband’s perspiring while gardening, called her dinners “candlelight suppers,” and often boasted about going “into town with a relative of a baronet.” When she began receiving wrong-number calls meant for a Chinese takeout, she insisted her husband “ring the ambassador.” During the run of Keeping Up Appearances in 1993, she was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She was later promoted to Commander of the Order and, in 2017, became a Dame Commander.

A Rich Theatre Career

Many of Routledge’s biggest fans, from Keeping Up Appearances and the detective series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1996-1998), may not have been aware of her time with the Royal Shakespeare Company or her numerous stage roles on the West End. She played the temperamental character actress Dotty Otley and a harried housekeeper in the farce Noises Off (1982), the imperious Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest (1999), the title character in Little Mary Sunshine (1962), Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard (1975), Queen Margaret in Richard III (1984), the confused Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals (1976), the earthy Nettie Fowler in Carousel (1992), and a religious fanatic in And A Nightingale Sang (1979).

Routledge was a favorite of playwright Alan Bennett, who wrote several Talking Heads television monologues for her, including A Woman Of No Importance (1982).

Broadway and Other Stage Work

Other American stage appearances included the 1980 New York Shakespeare in the Park production of The Pirates Of Penzance with Kevin Kline, where she played Ruth the pirate maid; and the London comedy How’s The World Treating You?—her Broadway debut in 1966—as a frumpy 1940s mother. None of her Broadway shows had lasting success. One, Love Match—her second time portraying Queen Victoria—never opened in 1968 due to a disappointing Los Angeles run. Her most notable flop was the Broadway production of Leonard Bernstein’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in which she played a series of American first ladies. It opened on May 4, 1976, and closed on May 8. Reflecting on the experience, she told the London Telegraph in 2007, “I think Alan Jay Lerner was frightened of Lenny.”

In the same interview, she acknowledged her reserved nature, saying, “I was brought up not to push, really. I’d wait to be asked. And I think my attitude was slightly despised, may I say?”

Early Life and Education

Katherine Patricia Routledge was born on February 17, 1929, in Birkenhead, England, near Liverpool. She was the third child and only daughter of Isaac Edgar Routledge, a haberdasher, and Catherine (Perry) Routledge.

Patricia graduated from high school in her hometown, then studied English language and literature at the University of Liverpool. Though she initially had no interest in acting, a lecturer named Edmund Colledge encouraged her. After graduation, she took an unpaid job with the Liverpool Playhouse and made her stage debut there in 1952 as Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School, and her London stage debut was in Richard Sheridan’s comic opera The Duenna in 1954.

Film and Later Work

She appeared in a few feature films, including To Sir, With Love (1967) with Sidney Poitier and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) with Suzanne Pleshette. Her last screen appearance was in 2001 in the British TV movie Anybody’s Nightmare, about a teacher in her 60s wrongly imprisoned for murder.

Although never officially retired, she gradually cut back her work. In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, she said, “For a very, very long time, I’ve only done what I’ve really wanted to burn up energy on.”

Personal Life and Legacy

She never married or had children. She moved to Chichester in West Sussex in 1999, and one of her last stage appearances was as Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband at the 2014 Chichester Festival Theatre.

She had hopeful thoughts about the afterlife, saying, “When I approach the pearly gates, I’d like to hear a Champagne cork popping, an orchestra tuning up and the sound of my mother laughing.”