Actress Sheila Bradley was so nervous at her birthday party in London she couldn’t eat a mouthful of supper. She sat in awe at the Cafe de Paris, awaiting the arrival of Noel Coward.
‘Noel finally descended the famous staircase in tails, to stand in front of the microphone and sing his songs, telling us little anecdotes in between.’ It was Coward’s first cabaret performance, and critic Kenneth Tynan later wrote: "He is benign, slightly flustered, as a cardinal might be who had been asked to participate in a frenetic tribal rite."
Four decades later, (‘I can hardly believe it’) Sheila is starring in one of Coward’s most enduring plays, ‘Blithe Spirit’, as Madame Arcati. After playing to packed houses in Brisbane, she has begun a five-and-a-half weeks’ tour of provincial Queensland with Coward’s longest-running comedy. She took the part without seeing the legendary Margaret Rutherford performance. While the temptation was always there, Sheila says she resolutely refused to go to her local Gold Coast video shop and hire the Blithe Spirit video. ‘I thought if I did, I might pick up something she did that I liked. I might have put it into my character and that would have been dangerous.’
After she was "well and truly ensconced" in rehearsals, ‘Blithe Spirit’ was shown on television, so she allowed herself to watch Margaret Rutherford, all five chins wagging, eyebrows arched in surprise, talking to "the other side". ("Is anybody out there?") ‘She was so incredibly funny...because she played it straight!’ Sheila says. ‘Nobody could ever copy her.’
Sheila, born in Romford, Essex, has been a singer and actor all her life. ‘I can write shorthand and I typed in an office for 12 months, but I’d be no good doing that now. So I do the only thing I know - I sing and act.’ She sang with the George Mitchell Singers at the Palladium, on the Norman Wisdom Show, and played in ‘Kismet’ with Alfred Drake. She played in Coward’s ‘Cowardy Custard’ and went to North Africa, Cyprus, Malta and the Far East to entertain the troops. Then she came to Australia in ‘Grab Me a Gondola’, ‘Charlie’s Aunt’, ‘Once Upon A Mattress’, ‘Mame’ and as Anna in ‘The King and I’.
‘I worked with Tony Hancock in Malta and North Africa, between his dashes back to London to do ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ on radio. Tony had the reputation of being difficult; but he certainly wasn’t at all difficult when I worked with him. I was just 24, and the first female he’d worked with. Though he didn’t let the audience see it, he was nervous; he didn’t like doing stand-up comedy. But he did enjoy sketch comedy and there was one thing we did which brought the house down. He did a Johnnie Ray sketch with girls rushing on stage to tear off parts of his suit. Then I came on, looking like a dag in a terrible hat covered with fruit. I had to stand in front of him while he seriously ate the fruit off my hat, neither of us laughing. He said to me: "Get the laughter out of the way at rehearsals, Sheila." It was terribly hard not to break up with that rubbery face in front of you, doing miraculous things with its eyebrows. It taught me discipline.’
Funnyman Norman Wisdom might have been Britain’s favourite clown, but he was not an easy character to work with. ‘None of us ever got to know him very well, and we were together on The Palladium for nine months, with an extra three months at the Prince of Wales theatre. The audiences adored Norman, but he saved his friendliness off stage for those he felt he needed.’
Sheila began in ‘Kismet’ as understudy to Joan Deiner. Then three months after the show opened, Joan took an unscheduled holiday and was sacked by impresario Jack Hylton ‘He just told her not to bother to come back. He was a nice little man, but tough, like a little terrier. You never wanted to do the wrong thing by him.’
Surrounded by suit-cases for her morning flight north to Cairns for a next-night opening, Sheila said: ‘There is only a handful of us old troupers to take on the older character roles in theatre. I love the business and don’t miss West End theatre one little bit. I took singing lessons at 12 and from then on, always wanted to sing. When ‘The King and I’ was being cast nobody thought I’d have a chance to play Anna, but I got the part. I happened to be a little bit pregnant at the time and I stayed in the show until the costumes couldn’t be let out any further. I see Anna as my greatest triumph.’
