(Pic courtesy of the Springbok Radio website at http://springbokradio.com/IMAGESPAGE4.html)Murray McGibbon pays tribute to well-known actress who has died at the age of 79.
The curtain fell in Johannesburg one last time on May 28 for Shelagh Holliday star of stage, screen, radio and television. She was 79.
I knew Shelagh long before I actually met her through the many roles she played for the Arts Councils in South Africa as well as the Pieter Toerien Management. She was a consummate performer, totally professional in every respect. She exuded class, style and sophistication in a disarming manner, yet with none of the often associated show-biz hype. Shelagh Holliday was an utterly sincere, grounded, humble human being who touched the lives of millions of South Africans through her work in virtually every performing arts medium.
South African born, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. Returning to South Africa upon the completion of her three years training there, she became one of South Africa’s most versatile actresses working in everything from musicals and revues to comedy, farce and drama.
Her star-studded stage career won her three Best Actress Awards and twenty-two nominations. Among these nominations were performances in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and A Lesson From The Aloes at the National Theatre in London. For the latter performance she was nominated Best Actress by the Society of West End Theatre Awards as well as by The Laurence Olivier Awards for 1980. Later she won the South African REPS Best Actress award for the same part. Further Best Actress awards were won for her work in The Secretary Bird (awarded by the Gallery Club) and Separate Tables (awarded by the Critics' Circle). Other memorable performances were as Madame Arcati with Erica Rogers and Michael McCabe in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and as Gertrude in a television production of Hamlet.
Like most truly great performing artists, Shelagh was accessible, humble and inordinately human. If you had met her on a bus or on an airplane, you would never have guessed she was an actress. She was a no-nonsense, down-to-earth individual; compassionate, caring and very loving. Whenever you were with her, she made you feel as if you were the most important person on the planet. For a while the world and its problems dissipated. Shelagh was there. With you.
Essentially a private, family orientated woman, her career could have soared to considerable international heights had she not been so devoted to her late husband Robin and children, Mark, Sean, Kerry and Cassy.
For my own part, I was fortunate to contract Shelagh to play the role of the Mother Superior in my 1996 production of Agnes of God for The Playhouse Company in Durban. As it happened, this turned out to be Shelagh’s last performance on the South African stage. She starred opposite Theresa Iglich and Charmaine Weir Smith in a production hailed by the critics.
She was a director’s dream in that she took what I gave her and brought back to the rehearsal room something beyond anything I was ever capable of inculcating or suggesting. She was hugely inventive and creative - a very “giving” actress. She effortlessly found solutions to complex artistic problems, without ever claiming to have even been part of the solution! She had a penetrating sense of humour, and a style and grace both on and off stage that will never be forgotten. She was in short a “class act”. I doubt that the South African stage will ever be graced by such an intelligent, poised, sophisticated actress in my lifetime. - Murray McGibbon, Professor of Theatre and Drama, Indiana University, USA, formerly Director of Drama for NAPAC and The Playhouse Company, Durban, South Africa
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