Maggie Fox, who has died aged 65 after an accident, was an actor of comic genius who had television roles in Coronation Street, Shameless and The Forsyte Saga but who will be best remembered as one half (“the tall one”) of the award-winning comedy duo LipService Theatre.
She and her onstage partner, Sue Ryding, wrote and performed more than 22 original comedy shows from a distinctly female perspective over nearly 40 years – and toured them to scores of theatres throughout Britain and to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Pakistan and the US.
In an era when, long before Covid, regional theatre struggled to survive, LipService played to packed houses, bringing theatres much needed income and building an audience of dedicated fans who returned loyally, show after show, to savour their special brand of savvy silliness.
Central to its success were Maggie’s riotously funny anarchic skills, consummate comic timing and instinctive talent for impromptu interaction with the audience. In the words of her fellow comic Helen Lederer, “Maggie was the funniest person in the room always.”
Their shows were frequently witty literary spoofs. Many years before Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong, their affectionate satire Withering Looks gently sent up theatre itself, as it purportedly presented an “authentic look at the Brontës” – performed by a (barely) professional actor, played by Sue, and a willing volunteer (“I don’t even get my expenses”) played by Maggie. Premiered at the Green Room, Manchester, in 1988, it had sell-out runs at the Edinburgh fringe, where it won a critics award for comedy in 1992, before touring all over the world.
It set the template for a series of spoofs that earned them the epithet “Britain’s favourite literary lunatics” from one national theatre critic. Taking aim at other “literary giants”, such as Conan Doyle in Move Over Moriarty (1996) or Louisa M Alcott in Very Little Women (2004), LipService were often actually targeting the popular culture versions of these classics, with their simplifications and sentimentality. A Picture of Doreen Gray (2014) and Mr Darcy Loses the Plot (2016) followed.
Witty but never cruel or cynical, they extended their reach to take in popular culture genres, such as 007 in Jane Bond (2007), aga sagas in Women on the Verger (2000) and Scandi noir in Inspector Norse (2012). Many involved the audience in theatrical origami, knitting of props or – in the case of their celebration of Doris Day, Desperate to Be Doris (2009), ambitiously training up a new community choir at each venue.
The duo were celebrated for cunning comic creativity with stuffed animal toys, surreal costumes, ridiculously fast change routines and dodgy cheapskate scenery. The artfully hammy playing, deliberately rickety set and gaudy costumes led an uncomprehending German producer once to decline to book the show on the grounds that audiences were “used to higher production values in Germany”.
The middle child of Raymond Fox, a solicitor and chair of the board of York Theatre Royal, and Barbara von Thadden, a German of aristocratic lineage (who escaped from Russian captivity in Pomerania at the end of the second world war), the young Margaret rapidly showed her talent for performance, especially in comedy.
She met Ryding, who was to become her lifelong onstage partner, at Bristol University in 1979, where they were both studying drama, finding laughs in a production of The Lady from the Sea that would have surprised Ibsen. From the outset, Maggie and Sue had the sort of chemistry that audiences who love Morecambe and Wise treasure and, like Eric Morecambe, Maggie had the gift of making audiences laugh uproariously just by walking on stage. With her huge, expressive eyes and her mobile face she was eloquent even without the aid of the duo’s invariably hilarious lines.
Her incursions into television were rare, as she was so often on tour, but her role as Ruth Audsley in Coronation Street (in 2001), a woman who befriends Julie Hesmondhalgh’s Hayley Cropper; and her conflicted housekeeper Bilson, serving the saturnine Soames, played by Damian Lewis, in The Forsyte Saga (2002-03), were memorable performances. She also appeared in Shameless (2006) and South Riding (2011), and was the voice of the librarian in the 2003 Bob the Builder TV movie. But it was live theatre that was her passion and her triumph.
LipService had a long relationship with the Library theatre in Manchester (now part of the Home arts centre), premiering many productions there.
Recent shows by the duo encompassed a strong digital element and access for deaf and disabled audiences.
At the time of Maggie’s death, LipService were in the middle of a tour of Chateau Ghoul, a new show developed from one they had created for online performance during lockdown.
She is survived by her mother, Barbara, by the actor and academic Malcolm Raeburn, her partner since 1985 and husband since 2000, and by their daughters, the actor and director Vita Fox, the writer Imogen Fox and the actor Helena Fox.
• Maria Margaret Fox, actor, born 23 November 1956; died 21 March 2022
