Viva Birkett

Viva Birkett (14 February 1887 – 27 June 1934) was a British stage actress who performed on both sides of the Atlantic during the early decades of the twentieth century, with a Broadway career spanning from 1906 to 1929. Born Valentine Viola Birkett in Exeter, England, she was the daughter of William Henry and Myra Martha Birkett, both Exeter natives, her father having worked as a woollen merchant in that coastal city. She trained under American actress Kate Bateman (1842–1917) before embarking on a professional stage career.

Birkett made her London debut on 28 June 1906 at the Lyric Theatre in a revival of Monsieur Beaucaire, adapted from the novel by Booth Tarkington. That same year, on 30 August, she made her New York City debut at the Hudson Theatre, playing Helen Plugenet in Hypocrites by Henry Arthur Jones, a production that ran into 1907. She went on to perform in London and New York throughout her career, also touring with companies led by George Arliss, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and Henry Jowett.

Among her notable London engagements, Birkett appeared at His Majesty's Theatre in 1911 in three Shakespeare productions: Twelfth Night, The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which she played Anne Page, and Macbeth, in which she took the role of Lady Macduff. Later that year and into 1912, she played Mrs. Darling in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan at the Duke of York's Theatre. In 1913 she appeared at the Garrick Theatre as Lady Violet Ainslie in Stanley Houghton's Trust the People, and in 1914 she took the title role of Trilby O'Farrell in an adaptation of George du Maurier's Trilby.

Her Broadway credits included Evidence, performed at the Lyric Theatre in New York in 1914, and Caroline by W. Somerset Maugham, which played at the Empire Theatre in 1916. In 1919 she appeared as Mrs. Baker in The Mollusc by Hubert Henry Davies with the George Arliss Company. Her final Broadway appearance came in the 1929–30 season, when she played the Princess of San Luca in Alberto Casella's Death Takes a Holiday, adapted by Walter Ferris, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, with her last performance in that production taking place in June 1930.

On 23 July 1912, Birkett married British actor Philip Merivale at St Marylebone Parish Church in London. The couple had four children together: daughters Rosamund and Valentine, and sons John and Philip. Birkett died from cancer on 27 June 1934, less than a month after leaving New York to return to her home on Seymour Road in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. She was survived by her husband and their children.