It was a privilege, an honour, but above all, great fun to meet and talk extensively to Audrey Noble while researching my book Thespians a couple of years ago. She was, at that time, 98 and although her eyesight was failing she had a phenomenal memory and told wonderful stories of working in rep before the war and with the Entertainments National Service Association during it.
After studying elocution, which many middle-class children did in those days, Audrey made her stage debut in 1933 at Bristol’s Prince’s Theatre as a walk-on in Ion Swinley’s Hamlet.
She was told by her first employer, Ronald Russell at Bristol’s Rapier Players, “You will never be a star, but you will always do good work in good companies.” That was true, and she became part of the glue that held the old rep system together. And, in fact, she was almost the strongest, and certainly the longest, thread running through Thespians.
Like all good rep actors she was able to turn her hand to anything although, even from a very early age it was as a character actor that she excelled. She appeared in all the old usual suspects 1960s television shows like Z Cars, Happily Ever After with Dora Bryan, and Crossroads with Noele Gordon – many of them going out live – but it was on stage that she felt most at home.
In a career spanning six decades, and having been a member of Equity for more than 74 years, Audrey was equally adept at comedy and serious drama, becoming a regular and popular character actor in rep at the Theatre Royal in Bath, Birmingham Rep, Cheltenham Everyman and Bristol Old Vic. In the 1980s she worked in London with the National Theatre and appeared in 1982 with Peter O’Toole in Man and Superman before making her final stage appearances at the Bristol Old Vic in This Happy Breed in 1984 and Tartuffe in 1985.
She donated her extensive collection of press-cuttings, photographs and memorabilia to Bristol University’s Theatre Collection, an archive which will prove invaluable to those wishing to learn about life in the theatre in the middle of the 20th-century.
Audrey Noble was born in Bristol on 19th August 1915, and died there on 30th November 2016, aged 101. Michael Hasted
With thanks and acknowledgement to The Stage and Shirley Brown for additional information.
