Viola Lyel

Viola Lyel (19 December 1896 – 14 August 1972) was an English actress born Viola Mary Watson in Hull, Yorkshire, the daughter of Frederick Watson and his wife Elizabeth, née Lyel. She attended Hull High School and Kilburn High School in London before training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her professional formation continued at the Old Vic, where she made her first stage appearance in 1918 in small parts and as an understudy.

Lyel's early career took her through several notable companies. In 1919 she worked with William Poel's company in The Return from Parnassus in London, and she subsequently toured with Ben Greet's company. After a period with the Liverpool Repertory Company beginning in 1922, she joined Sir Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Company in 1925. In 1926 she appeared in Yellow Sands at the Haymarket Theatre, London, alongside Cedric Hardwicke and Ralph Richardson. By 1928 she was a member of Nigel Playfair's company at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.

In 1929 Lyel traveled to the United States for the first time, making her New York debut at the Elting Theatre in September as Lucy Timson in Murder on the Second Floor, a play by Frank Vosper. She returned to Broadway in 1930 to appear in Nine Till Six, playing Clare Pembroke. Her Broadway career thus spanned 1929 to 1930, encompassing both productions.

Throughout the 1930s Lyel took on a wide range of roles in Britain. She played Nancy Sibley in Milestones in 1930, Edith in Bernard Shaw's Getting Married in 1932, and Enid Underwood in John Galsworthy's Strife in 1933. In 1934 she appeared as Prudence in The Lady of the Camellias and as Gwen in The Late Christopher Bean, a role she reprised in 1935. She played Miss Bingley in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1936, a production that ran for nearly a year. In 1938 she rejoined the Old Vic company, playing Valeria in Coriolanus, and the following year she appeared in Will Scott's Married for Money.

The 1940s brought some of Lyel's most sustained stage work. She played Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement in 1941 and Miss Preen in The Man Who Came to Dinner beginning in 1942, a production that ran for two years; she returned to the role in 1944 on an ENSA tour. That same year at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon she played the Queen in Hamlet, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Lady Politick Would-Be in Volpone. In 1945 at the same theatre she took on Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra, Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, Queen Katharine in Henry VIII, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and Emilia in Othello. From March 1948 she played the schoolmistress Miss Gossage in The Happiest Days of Your Life by John Dighton, a production that ran for more than six hundred performances.

In the 1950s Lyel rejoined the Old Vic, where her parts included the Widow of Florence in All's Well That Ends Well and the Queen in King John. In February 1954 she played Miss Ashford in a revival of The Private Secretary, and in 1956 she appeared in Ronald Millar's long-running West End comedy The Bride and the Bachelor. She revisited the role of Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer at the Bristol Old Vic in 1960 and performed the part again with the same company in Lebanon. Also at Bristol she played the Abbess in The Comedy of Errors and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

In September 1962 Lyel appeared as Hilda Rose in the London production of Big Fish, Little Fish, and in 1964 she played Lady Cleghorn in William Douglas-Home's The Reluctant Peer. Her final stage role was Aunt March in an adaptation of Little Women in 1968. Lyel married John Anthony Edwards in 1932. She died in Hampstead, London, on 14 August 1972, at the age of 75.