Christchurch actress’s colourful career

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 11

Christchurch actress’s colourful career

Elizabeth Moody, one of New Zealand’s few actresses to have roles specially created for her by the country’s leading playwrights, talks about her colourful career on “Kaleidoscope’s” extended feature tonight (9.15 on One). She has been acting since kindergarten, when she chose to play the bad fairy. Since then she has undertaken a range of roles in her home town, Christchurch, and throughout the country. This year the New Zealand playwright Roger Hall wrote the part of Agnes for her in his latest play, "The Share Club." In 1980 Bruce Mason also wrote a part specially for her in his last stage play before his death, “Blood of the Lamb.” She played Henry Higginson, the “male” partner of a lesbian couple. That play was commissioned from Mason for the opening of a second studio at Christchurch’s Court Theatre, a professional theatre of special significance to Elizabeth Moody as her family played a large part in its establishment 15 years ago.

She has appeared in some memorable roles there, among them Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of being Earnest.” She is currently playing Martha in Edward Albee’s

"Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — a role undertaken by Elizabeth Taylor in the film version. The Court Theatre’s artistic director, Elric Hooper, describes Eliza-

beth Moody as an actress with great versatility and extraordinary comic ability. She is known nationally through her performances In “Road Show,” a theatre presentation which toured the country tor six months in 1983. Her television appearances as a panellist on "Beauty and the Beast” and in “Antiques for Love or Money” brought out the strong personality and tart humour for which she is renowned. In both programmes she was there "for spice,” she says, and in the latter it was she who provided the good-God-who-on-Earth-would-want-one-of - those-in-their-home kind of humour. Elizabeth Moody plays powerful roles, and the role of Mrs Marwick in her latest major television drama, “The Fire-Raiser,” is no exception. In "Kaleidoscope,” she comments on local directors, playwrights and workshops, and expresses concern for the future of New Zealand Theatre in view of what she sees as the divisive nature of militant feminism.