THEATRICAL CAREER WITH MANY FACETS

A proposed six-month sojourn in Perth became more than half a century for this well-loved actor, director, teacher and mentor, whose belief in social justice and equality of opportunity informed her life and work.

Jenny McNae OAM 1938 − 2023
Jennifer Mary McNae was born on October 31, 1938, in Richmond, Surrey, the youngest of three children. Her father was a senior editor at the Press Association, commuting every day to London’s Fleet Street. During World War II, Jenny had a lucky escape when the nose cone of a bomb crashed through the slate roof above her cot and landed a few centimetres away. Later in the war, after she, her mother and siblings, Jill and Colin, returned from evacuation in North Wales, the dreadful V bomb sirens started wailing, but Jenny refused to hide under the bed because a spider was there!

The family went to the theatre often, and schoolgirl Jenny very much admired her big sister, Jill, who became an actor for a while. Aged 16, Jenny left the prestigious Tiffins Girls School in Kingston upon Thames and started work at the historic Richmond Theatre as an assistant stage manager and to ‘play as cast’.

She didn’t have to wait in the wings for long and, throughout her 20s, had leading roles in repertory theatres across the UK, including Salisbury, Colchester and Birmingham, as well as in Nairobi, Kenya. She played in comedy, drama, musical theatre and as principal boy in pantomime. During this busy period, she was engaged to be married, but it didn’t work out, and in 1969, Perth theatre entrepreneur Frank Baden-Powell, on a visit to the UK, invited Jenny to play in his Old Time Music Hall.

She arrived in Perth in 1970 for six months and stayed for more than 50 years. She loved her new life and was soon under contract at the Playhouse Theatre, working as associate director and playing many leading roles, including Amanda in Private Lives and Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. At The Hole in the Wall Theatre, she played several main characters, including Amanda in The Glass Menagerie and the title role in Goldoni’s Mirandolina.

During a year in Sydney, Jenny appeared at the Old Tote and Marian Street Theatres and on a TV series with British comedian Dick Emery.

Returning to Perth, she continued her stage career, as well as acting in ABC radio dramas. She created the title role in The Newspaper of Claremont Street, adapted from Elizabeth Jolley’s novel, and drew praise for other dramatic performances, such as Frances in Robert Hewett’s Gulls, and for her comic genius in such parts as Charlotte, the eccentric psychiatrist in Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy.

Jenny enjoyed travelling for work and play, and appeared onstage in Dubai, Doha and Kuala Lumpur.

A natural educator, she conducted numerous youth workshops over the years, as well as mentoring many young performers and theatre makers. She tutored at WAAPA and Curtin University, establishing their theatre arts course in Kalgoorlie. Her ideas were very modern − she always embraced the new.

Jenny also gave her time to assisting community theatre, as teacher, adjudicator and director, including running workshops at Bandyup Women’s Prison. Her outstanding contribution to the development of theatre arts in WA earned her an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2009.

In 1998, Jenny became deputy chair of Agelink Theatre (now THEATRE 180), a position she held for 20 years. She both directed and acted, touring nationally as the delightfully scatty Cissy in Ronald Harwood’s Quartet.

An expert at stagecraft, she became artistic director of The Hole in the Wall in its last years. Many of the public also knew her for her television work in the 1980s, judging a talent show and appearing on WA’s annual channel Seven telethons.

Jenny’s contribution as an advocate for both theatre and social justice was considerable. A long-standing member of the board of the Perth Theatre Trust, she was also president of Actors Equity in WA for some years, on the Committee for Anglican Schools Commission and president of the WA Women’s Advisory Council. A member of the Labor Party, she believed ardently in equality of opportunity and in social justice, seeing this as a natural extension of her Christian faith.

After receiving the OAM, Jenny volunteered for the Museum of Performing Arts and His Majesty’s Theatre. She was an audio describer for blind audiences and became a patron for police cadets undergoing training.

Although she did recover from bowel cancer, Jenny was left with peripheral neuropathy, which made performing difficult. Her last professional appearance was in a pantomime by Edgar Metcalfe at the Playhouse Theatre that she loved, just before it was about to close, and on the last night she recited a farewell ode to that theatre before its lights finally went out.

Hard working and full of vitality, Jenny had a mobile and expressive face, with a very wide smile. Although affected by dementia in her last years, there was still a twinkle in her dark eyes that made her the Jen of old.

Warm, intelligent, spirited and complex, generous and talented, Jenny richly deserves her place of honour in Western Australia’s theatrical history.

Obituary by Jenny Davis.