Auriol Smith
Encyclopedia
Auriol Smith is an English actress and theatre director. She is a founder member and associate director of the Orange Tree Theatre
. She started her career as an actor, but now divides her time between acting and directing.
in January 1960 in Harold Pinter
's first play The Room (which she had originally played in a converted squash-court for the Bristol Drama Department in May 1957).
co-founded the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames in 1971, where she has since played many classic and modern parts. "We enjoyed doing small-scale productions in Jamaica, and hoped that eventually we'd run that kind of theatre in England. Then, when we returned in 1971, we decided that now was the time and Richmond (where we lived) was the place." (Auriol Smith in conversation with Marsha Hanlon for the Orange Tree Appeal brochure, 1991).
Since the new theatre opened in February 1991 her Orange Tree performance credits have included:
at the Royal Exchange Manchester (deputising for Sylvia Syms
who was indisposed), and toured North America for the ACTER company in The Winter's Tale
playing opposite Paul Shelley
as Leontes. She also appeared in Christine Edzard
's film The Fool
.
In the West End
for producer Bill Kenwright
, Smith has directed Dead Guilty by Richard Harris
(Apollo 1995) starring Hayley Mills
and Jenny Seagrove
; and Michael Redgrave
's The Aspern Papers
(Wyndham's 1996) with Hannah Gordon
. She also directed a Japanese version of Dead Guilty in Japan
.
At the Theatre Royal Windsor she directed Shadow of a Doubt and Canaries Sometimes Sing. At the Northampton Theatre Royal she directed Arthur Miller
's Broken Glass, David Mamet
's Oleanna and James Robson's Mail Order Bride; while at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
in Scarborough she first directed Love Me Slender.
and was a long-serving member of the Radio Drama Company. Her BBC radio credits include Alan Bennett
's Forty Years On
, the role of a tipsy summer partygoer in Ellen Dryden's romantic comedy Forgetting Rosalind (a FirstWrites production for the BBC), and East of the Sun by Carey Harrison
.
For Naxos Smith has recorded the roles of Alice in Henry V
with Samuel West
, and the Duchess of York in Richard III
with Kenneth Branagh
. She has also acted on television in Kavanagh QC
, One Foot in the Grave
, Peak Practice
and Doctors
, among others.
. They have two daughters: Dorcas Walters, a former soloist and principal dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Octavia Walters who is a fellow actress.
Orange Tree Theatre
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round....
. She started her career as an actor, but now divides her time between acting and directing.
Early years
Whilst taking a degree in drama at Bristol University she became President of the Green Room Society at the newly-founded university Drama Department. This was followed by a year in America as a Fulbright Scholar, before making her professional debut at the Hampstead Theatre ClubHampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...
in January 1960 in Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
's first play The Room (which she had originally played in a converted squash-court for the Bristol Drama Department in May 1957).
Orange Tree Theatre
After extensive experience in repertory theatres and a year in Jamaica setting up a drama school and theatre, she and her husband Sam WaltersSam Walters
Sam Walters MBE is a British theatre director and Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, specialising in theatre-in-the-round productions...
co-founded the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames in 1971, where she has since played many classic and modern parts. "We enjoyed doing small-scale productions in Jamaica, and hoped that eventually we'd run that kind of theatre in England. Then, when we returned in 1971, we decided that now was the time and Richmond (where we lived) was the place." (Auriol Smith in conversation with Marsha Hanlon for the Orange Tree Appeal brochure, 1991).
Performances
In the old theatre:- Penelope in A Slight Accident (James Saunders) Lunchtimes, January 1976
- Find Me (Olwen WymarkOlwen WymarkOlwen Wymark is an American writer and playwright.-Early life:Olwen Margaret Buck was born on February 14, 1932 in Oakland, California her parents being Philip W. and Barbara Buck...
) 1977 - Teacher in The Primary English Class (Israel HorovitzIsrael HorovitzIsrael Horovitz is an American playwright and screenwriter.-Theatre career:An American dramatist, Horovitz has written more than 70 produced plays, many of which have been translated and performed in more than 30 languages worldwide . The 70/70 Horovitz Project was created by NYC Barefoot Theatre...
) November 1979 - Woman in Living Remains (Martin CrimpMartin CrimpMartin Andrew Crimp is a British playwright.Sometimes described as a practitioner of the "in-yer-face" school of contemporary British drama, Crimp though rejects the label...
) Lunchtimes, 9–25 July 1982
Since the new theatre opened in February 1991 her Orange Tree performance credits have included:
- Countess Czernyak in His Majesty (Harley Granville Barker 1992 - also Edinburgh International Festival)
- Mary Faugh in The Dutch CourtesanThe Dutch CourtesanThe Dutch Courtesan is an early Jacobean stage play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston circa 1604. It was performed by the Children of the Queen's Revels, one of the troupes of boy actors active at the time, in the Blackfriars Theatre in London.The play was entered into the...
(John MarstonJohn MarstonJohn Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
1992) - Hester Bellboys in Penny For a Song (John WhitingJohn WhitingJohn Robert Whiting was an English dramatist and critic.Born in Salisbury, England, he was educated at Taunton School. His works include:* A Penny for a Song. A play * Marching Song. A play...
1992) - Dorothy in Nice Dorothy (David Cregan 1993)
- Mariette in Doctor Knock (1994) (Jules RomainsJules RomainsJules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule , was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement...
1994) - Emma in Family Circles (Alan AyckbournAlan AyckbournSir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
1996 and 1997) - Mme Lepine in Overboard (Michael Vinaver, part of a French season in 1997)
- Aglae in Court in the Act (farce Maurice Hennequin and Pierre VeberPierre VéberPierre-Eugène Veber was a French playwright and writer.-Theatre 1897–1910:*1897: Dix ans après, comedy in one act, with Lucien Muhlfeld, premiered in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Odéon 5 April 1897...
1998) - Lady Wishfort in The Way of the WorldThe Way of the WorldThe Way of the World is a play written by British playwright William Congreve. It premiered in 1700 in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London...
(CongreveWilliam CongreveWilliam Congreve was an English playwright and poet.-Early life:Congreve was born in Bardsey, West Yorkshire, England . His parents were William Congreve and his wife, Mary ; a sister was buried in London in 1672...
1999) - Mme Dupont in Have You Anything to Declare? (farce Hennequin and Veber 2001)
- Widow Warren in The Road to Ruin (Thomas HolcroftThomas HolcroftThomas Holcroft was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.-Early life:He was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop, and kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced to the status of hawking peddler...
2002) - Helena in Previous Convictions (Alan Franks 2005)
- Lady Smatter in The Woman HaterThe Woman HaterThe Woman Hater is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. One of the earliest of their collaborations, it was the first of their plays to appear in print, in 1607.-Date and publication:...
(Fanny BurneyFanny BurneyFrances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
2007) http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/19376/the-woman-hater - Grandma, Rieger's mother in Leaving (Vaclav HavelVáclav HavelVáclav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
2008) http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/21863/leaving
Directing
Since 1991 she has also regularly directed at the Orange Tree. Her credits have included:- Cat With Green Violin (Jane ColesJane Coles-Plays:* Backstroke in a Crowded Pool, 1993* Cat with Green Violin, 1991* Crossing the Equator, 1995* Low Flying Aircraft, 1999* Cat With Green Violin, 2004* The Ultimate Fudge-External links:*...
) 1991 - The Case of Rebellious Susan (Henry Arthur JonesHenry Arthur JonesHenry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
) 1994: Time Out Award 1994 - The Verge (Susan GlaspellSusan GlaspellSusan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...
) 1996 - Love Me Slender (Vanessa Brooks) 1997
- Dissident, Goes Without Saying (Michael Vinaver) 1997
- Lips Together, Teeth ApartLips Together, Teeth ApartLips Together, Teeth Apart is a 1991 play by American playwright Terrence McNally.-Plot:A gay community in Fire Island provides an unlikely setting for two straight couples spending the Fourth of July weekend in a house inherited by Sally from her brother who died of AIDS. Through monologues...
(Terrence McNallyTerrence McNallyTerrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...
) 1998 and1999 - The Cassilis Engagement (St John HankinSt John HankinSt. John Emile Clavering Hankin was a British Edwardian essayist and playwright. Along with George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, and Harley Granville-Barker, he was a major exponent of Edwardian "New Drama"...
) 1999 - The Captain's Tiger (Athol FugardAthol FugardAthol Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English, best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy-Award winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood...
) 2000 - Flyin’ West (Pearl CleagePearl CleagePearl Cleage is an African-American author whose work, both fiction and non-fiction, has been widely recognized. Her novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day was a 1998 Oprah’s Book Club selection. Cleage is known for her feminist views, particularly regarding her identity as an...
) 2001 - Three Sisters Two (Reza de Wet) 2002
- The House of Bernarda Alba (Federico García LorcaFederico García LorcaFederico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
) 2003 - Simplicity (Lady Mary Wortley MontaguLady Mary Wortley MontaguThe Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about...
after Pierre Marivaux) 2003 - Doña Rosita the Spinster (Lorca) 2004
- The Women of Lockerbie (Deborah Brevoort) 2005
- Tosca’s Kiss (Kenneth Jupp) 2006
- Nan (John MasefieldJohn MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
) 2007 - ChainsChains (play)Chains is a play by the English playwright Elizabeth Baker. It was first performed in April 1909 by the Play Actors Subscription Society at the Court Theatre....
(Elizabeth BakerElizabeth BakerElizabeth Baker was an English playwright. She earned her living primarily as a typist, and was a spinster until the age of 39 when she married James Allaway, a widower, in June 1915. By then, she had already written several plays...
) 2007 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/18881/chains - Mary Goes First (Henry Arthur JonesHenry Arthur JonesHenry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
) 2008 http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/22952/mary-goes-first - The Ring of Truth (Wynyard BrowneWynyard BrowneWynyard Barry Browne was an English playwright.He was born in London in 1911, and educated at Marlborough and Christ's College, Cambridge. His plays include 'The Holly and the Ivy', which was first produced at the Duchess Theatre in London in 1950 and was later made into a film, for which he wrote...
) 2009 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/ringtruth-rev.htm - Mary Broome (Allan MonkhouseAllan MonkhouseAllan Noble Monkhouse was an English playwright, critic, essayist and novelist.He was born in Barnard Castle, County Durham. He worked in the cotton trade, in Manchester, and settled in Disley, Cheshire...
) March 2011 http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/marybroome-rev.htm
Other acting and directing work
During 1990, as part of a busy year, she played Lady Wishfort in The Way of the WorldThe Way of the World
The Way of the World is a play written by British playwright William Congreve. It premiered in 1700 in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London...
at the Royal Exchange Manchester (deputising for Sylvia Syms
Sylvia Syms
Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...
who was indisposed), and toured North America for the ACTER company in The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...
playing opposite Paul Shelley
Paul Shelley
Paul Shelley is an English actor.Shelley trained at RADA and has mainly worked in the theatre as a classical actor...
as Leontes. She also appeared in Christine Edzard
Christine Edzard
Christine Edzard is a film director, writer, and costume designer. She is best known for her critically acclaimed film adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel, Little Dorrit , for which she was nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay...
's film The Fool
The Fool (film)
The Fool is a British film, produced and directed by Christine Edzard in 1990 from a script by Edzard and Olivier Stockman.The plot examines the double life of a humble clerk posing as a businessman and moving in upper social circles...
.
In the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
for producer Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright
Bill Kenwright CBE is a leading West End theatre producer and film producer.He is also the Chairman of Everton Football Club, an English professional football club from the city of Liverpool....
, Smith has directed Dead Guilty by Richard Harris
Richard Harris
Richard St John Harris was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer....
(Apollo 1995) starring Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award...
and Jenny Seagrove
Jenny Seagrove
Jennifer Ann Seagrove is an English actress. She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and rose to fame playing the lead in a TV dramatisation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance and the 1983 film Local Hero...
; and Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
's The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1888, with its first book publication later in the same year. One of James' best-known and most acclaimed longer tales, The Aspern Papers is based on an anecdote that James heard about a Shelley...
(Wyndham's 1996) with Hannah Gordon
Hannah Gordon
Hannah Cambell Grant Gordon is a Scottish actress who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television work, including Upstairs, Downstairs, Telford's Change, My Wife Next Door, Joint Account and an appearance in the final episode of One Foot in the Grave.-Early life:Gordon was born in...
. She also directed a Japanese version of Dead Guilty in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
At the Theatre Royal Windsor she directed Shadow of a Doubt and Canaries Sometimes Sing. At the Northampton Theatre Royal she directed Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
's Broken Glass, David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
's Oleanna and James Robson's Mail Order Bride; while at the Stephen Joseph Theatre
Stephen Joseph Theatre
The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain....
in Scarborough she first directed Love Me Slender.
Television and audio
She has worked extensively on radio including Pinter's 1960 radio version of his sixty-minute play The Room for the BBC Third Programme. For ten years she presented Listen with Mother on BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
and was a long-serving member of the Radio Drama Company. Her BBC radio credits include Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
's Forty Years On
Forty Years On (play)
Forty Years On is a 1968 play by Alan Bennett. It was his first West End play.-Subject:The play is set in a British public school called Albion House , which is putting on an end of term play in front of the parents, i.e. the audience...
, the role of a tipsy summer partygoer in Ellen Dryden's romantic comedy Forgetting Rosalind (a FirstWrites production for the BBC), and East of the Sun by Carey Harrison
Carey Harrison
-Life:Harrison was born in London to actors Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, and raised in Los Angeles and New York, where he attended the Lycée Français. Subsequently, in Britain, he attended Sunningdale School, Harrow School, and Jesus College, Cambridge....
.
For Naxos Smith has recorded the roles of Alice in Henry V
Henry V (play)
Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in approximately 1599. Its full titles are The Cronicle History of Henry the Fifth and The Life of Henry the Fifth...
with Samuel West
Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
, and the Duchess of York in Richard III
Richard III (play)
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...
with Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
. She has also acted on television in Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC is a British television series made by Carlton Television for ITV between 1995 and 2001. It has been shown on ITV3 as recently as August 2011; series 1–6 are available on Region 2 DVDs....
, One Foot in the Grave
One Foot in the Grave
One Foot in the Grave is a BBC television sitcom series written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series, including seven Christmas specials, two Comic Relief specials, over an eleven year period, from early 1990 to late 2000...
, Peak Practice
Peak Practice
Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time...
and Doctors
Doctors (BBC Soap Opera)
Doctors is a British daytime television soap opera, set in the fictional Midland town of Letherbridge, defined as being close to the City of Birmingham. It was created by Chris Murray; Mal Young drove its development, and Carson Black was the original producer. The first episode was broadcast on...
, among others.
Private life
Auriol Smith is the wife of Orange Tree co-founder and Artistic Director Sam WaltersSam Walters
Sam Walters MBE is a British theatre director and Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, specialising in theatre-in-the-round productions...
. They have two daughters: Dorcas Walters, a former soloist and principal dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Octavia Walters who is a fellow actress.
External links
- Orange Tree Theatre website http://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk/