Not a role for Elsie

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33783, 4 March 1975, Page 18

Not a role for Elsie

Patricia Phoenix, better known to television viewers of Coronation Street as Elsie Tanner, is in Christchurch — to play the part of an “unliberated lady.” After 14 years as the tempestuous lady of the street, she has switched to a role ini which Elsie Tanner would 1 feel slightly restricted — a Victorian wife in the psychological thriller “Gaslight.” The production will be performed in Christchurch from March 4 to 15. during a fiveweek tour of New Zealand. In Christchurch yesterday with other members of the. "Gaslight” cast (and also of i Coronation Street), Alan. Browning (her husband) and! Ivan Davis, Patricia Phoenix said that she had projected a lot of her character into Elsie Tanner. Elsie ran the whole gamut of emotions; she was no archetype. Both Elsie and Patricia Phoenix had tempers. The difference was that

Elsie’s erupted once weekly, Fat Phoenix’s once a decade. Often Elsie Tanner’s choice of clothing was Patricia Phoenix’s. “I can still recall the ring from an annoyed producer: ‘What was that fur doing on your collar? You know Elsie Tanner could never afford that.’ “I vowed and declared it was rabbit. I knew it wasn’t.” People who met her in the street in England were less likely to greet her as Elsie Tanner than those overseas to whom she had become familiar only in her Coronation Street role. Her only way of counteracting her image of Elsie Tanner was to make Patricia Phoenix bigger than Elsie Tanner, she said. This was what she was doing now. Viewers who expected to go to “Gaslight” to see Elsie Tanner would see the actress Patricia Phoenix. “This role is totally opposite to Elsie. It is good for me and good for the audience.”

She found it difficult to ac-; count for her 14 years in I Coronation Street except for i the “super part” of Elsie Tan-< ner, and the camaraderie that existed amongst those who played in the Street series. The boredom of making the series was its worst feature. It became like a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. office job, in which she; had to be in the studio all ( day even if it were only to; deliver two lines in the script i each day. Her plans after the tour of : “Gaslight” are to mix theatre with television, and perhaps!

do another television series. Having been an actress since the age of 11, she wants to return to the more varied roles in which she acted before her 14 years with Coronation Street. She described herself as an actress who could never tire of a role while her interpretation of that role was imperfect.

“I am a tryer. I can never say, ‘I have completed that part.’ It can always be tried another way; this or that can be changed. I am my biggest critic.”