I first saw Avril Elgar on a Sunday night over 60 years ago in a television adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play You Touched Me! I have never forgotten her performance. Her unforgettable face was as frail and as strong as breath. She remained one of my favourite actors and one of the best.
We both appeared once in a mimed television production of the nativity story. Avril was very striking as an angel, at one point in my memory seeming to fly. The nativity play was repeated annually over the next few years. TV programmes then used to credit any theatre work actors were doing at the time, and so, after each showing of the nativity, the credits said, “Avril Elgar is appearing in Farewell, Farewell Eugene at the Garrick theatre” long after its run was over.
