Although best known for her TV roles, Penelope Keith is happy to be touring in a JB Priestley play, due to arrive in the region next month.

She tells Steve Pratt about the legacy of her past and her love of the theatre.

SOME actors regard matinee performances as more of a chore than a delight. Penelope Keith is not one of them. She's looking forward to the afternoon shows when she brings JB Priestley's Time And The Conways to Newcastle Theatre Royal next week.

The actress, best known for TV series The Good Life and To The Manor Born, remembers the "marvellous matinee" at her last appearance at the North-East theatre in Mrs Warren's Profession five or six years ago.

"I always say to younger actors that they should remember people who come to matinees have probably forgotten more about theatre than we will ever know," she says. "People go to matinees because they want to see the play. In the evening, they go for various other reasons, perhaps a birthday or other celebration."

Keith has a career spanning many years, although she remains etched in the collective public memory as haughty Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life and newly-impoverished posh person Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born.

Despite that, she doesn't think it was hard to escape from those two domineering women. "I don't feel that," she says. "I was doing plays and other things on TV, but they were both jolly marvellous parts and I was lucky." There are constant reminders of both series through seemingly endless repeats.

Keith has recorded an interview for the programme featuring The Good Life in BBC2's current Best British Sitcom series. The show, which ran from 1975-78, is one of ten vying for the title. As the actress so rightly points out: "There's an awful lot of retrospectives. Why don't the powers-that-be give you the money to make programmes as opposed showing old ones?"

However, she believes in the staying power of The Good Life - in which she starred with Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington - which is still repeated regularly on the BBC. Two years after that ended, she was starring in To The Manor Born, which ran for three years. The repeats began in earnest 15 years ago.

She doesn't have a favourite out of Margo and Audrey. "I don't have preferences really," she says. "The difference was that To The Manor Born had a story, which progressed, and that was fascinating to do."

What's occupying her thoughts at present is a stage tour of Time And The Conways, the Priestley play charting an affluent family's life between the wars.

Keith plays the matriarch, Mrs Conway. It's the first time she's done the play, or any Priestley play come to that. What she found fascinating was the language and the fact that it begins in 1919 and moves on to 1937 in the second act.

"It's about a family, with six children, and various friends, and mirrors what happened in this country over that period," she explains. "In 1919, everyone was full of hope at the end of the First World War. By 1939, the country had been through the most terrible turmoil and was in the shadow of war again."

The cast of ten - large by most touring company standards - means the play is seldom revived because of what she calls "the money crunchers". But she loves the part. "It's wonderfully written and, as with all great writers, it's all there on the page for you to discover."

This costume drama is very different from her most recent TV appearance in Margery And Gladys, an ITV film teaming her with June Brown, alias Dot Cotton from EastEnders. That was a contemporary comedy-drama in which the pair went on the run after apparently killing an intruder.

"That was such a fun script," says Keith. "I have been sent various scripts I didn't much enjoy. It was just lovely to see a one-off with an intriguing idea. I suppose 30 years ago it would have been made as a film for the cinema."

Her TV appearances in new shows are infrequent, which doesn't bother her. "I'm happy in the theatre," she explains. "I'm lucky to straddle both media. I've been away from the theatre for 18 months and that's been a conscious decision because my roots and training, and most of my life, has been in the theatre."

She wanted to act from an early age, but it wasn't plays that inspired her. "If anything influenced me, it was going to pantomimes and being taken to shows. The whole idea appealed," she recalls.

Part of her absence from the stage was explained by her duties as High Sheriff of Surrey from 2002-2003. She was born in that county, and still lives there with husband Rodney Timson and their sons.

Keith enjoys touring, seeing nice places and nice theatres. "What's lovely is to play to audiences who are a community and understand your language and culture," she says. "In London, there's usually tons and tons of visitors or tourists who don't necessarily want to go to the theatre, or who have had a hell of a time driving in and trying to park the car."

While in Newcastle, she'll be organising a sightseeing tour. "I want to take the company, who are all very young and I could be their mother, to Hadrian's Wall which they haven't seen," she says.

* The Good Life features in Saturday's Britain's Best Sitcoms on BBC2.

* Time And The Conways is at Newcastle Theatre Royal from Monday to Saturday (Feb 2-7). Tickets 0870 905 5060.

Published: 27/01/2004