Penelope Keith: 'giggly, mischievous' tributes pour in
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- Michelle Terry, artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe, recalled working with Keith on the 2004 Theatre Royal Bath production of Blithe Spirit and shared the acting advice Keith once passed on, drawn from the Lunts: "you're asking for the laugh, not the jam."
- Susannah Waters described Keith performing her first commissioned script — a series of Elizabeth I monologues for the 2001 Covent Garden festival — taking "care over every syllable" and refusing to change a word of the then-untried writer's text.
- Samantha Spiro countered the "formidable" reputation Keith had been warned about, saying she found Keith "giggly, mischievous and extremely generous" with "exquisite" comic timing that always grounded comedy in truth.
- Matt Pinches, co-founder of Guildford Shakespeare Company, said Keith first attended their 2008 outdoor As You Like It as a plain audience member and later voiced Hymen through an on-stage gramophone "floating through the trees" to bless Rosalind and Orlando's marriage.
- Keith played the Ghost of Christmas Past in Guildford Shakespeare Company's pandemic-era online A Christmas Carol, filming alone with a camera operator and green screen to help "reassure audiences that theatre was still alive."
- Keith supported small regional theatre for years, asking after company fortunes by name, sending handwritten cards after productions, and leaving "the most charming voicemail" when she could not attend a show.
Why it matters: The tributes reframe Dame Penelope Keith from a remote national treasure into a working actor who personally mentored drama-school graduates, drove to a pregnant writer's home for rehearsals, and kept tabs on a small Surrey company by name — a reminder that her craft was matched by an unusually hands-on generosity toward the wider theatre community she loved.
