Joanna Tope – Actress
Born May 14th 1944; died December 19th 2024
Joanna Tope, who has died aged 80, was an actress who combined glamour, sophistication and intelligence over a more than fifty-year career that saw her light up stage and screen. This came in two separate acts, with a ten-year gap between. The first saw her appear on stage alongside the likes of John Gielgud in Edward Bond’s play, Bingo (1973), play Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and take the title role in Hedda Gabler.
On TV she had a regular role as Dr. Clare Scott in twenty-two episodes of what was then Emmerdale Farm (1973), and appeared in guest roles in Z Cars (1974) and children’s science fiction drama, The Tomorrow People (1975). Prior to her sabbatical, Tope also appeared in four episodes of Jack Gerson’s supernatural thriller, The Omega Factor (1979).
When Tope returned to acting in 1994, it was as Jocasta in a new version of Oedipus Rex at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, where she played opposite Cal MacAninch in the theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio space in a mirror lined and blood soaked production.
This set the ball rolling for a substantial run of shows in the Gorbals based theatre. These included Pygmalion (1999), Cavalcade (1999), Peer Gynt (2000), Blithe Spirit (2000), 10 Rillington Place (2000), Venice Preserved (2003), A Taste of Honey, Cherie (2003), and Baby Doll (2005). She also appeared at the Traverse and Royal Lyceum Theatres, Edinburgh, and with Stellar Quines Theatre Company, Rapture Theatre and Lung Ha.
Tope’s crowning achievement came when she was nominated for a New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for Douglas Maxwell’s play, The Promise (2010). Originally titled Promises, Promises, Maxwell’s play saw Tope cast as Maggie Brodie, a veteran teacher who attempts to protect one of her six-year-old charges. Produced by Random Accomplice Theatre Company and directed by Johnny McKnight, Tope’s performance saw her praised by the New York critics.
Tope went on to work with Maxwell again in A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity (2013), in which she played a potty-mouthed elder stateswoman who forms an unlikely friendship with her dead husband’s young employee. After runs in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Tope again visited New York with the play.
Latterly, Tope made a hilarious cameo opposite Gavin Mitchell’s hapless barman Boaby in Still Game 2 (2017) at the SECC Hydro in Glasgow. She also appeared in the original TV version’s final three episodes as Winnie, who gets hitched to Winston in Glasgow Botanic Gardens.
Most recently, Tope formed part of a powerhouse quartet of female actors in the Tron Theatre, Glasgow’s 2024 production of Caryl Churchill’s remarkable play, Escaped Alone. Despite such achievements in the second half of her career, Tope’s programme biography always stated that her three best and favourite productions were her children.
Joanna Margaret Tope was born in Bideford, Devon, the only child to Margaret (née
Pennington) and Gerald Tope. Gerald worked for duplicator manufacturer Gestetner, while Margaret and other family matriarchs ran the New Inn, Bideford and Hartland Quay Hotel, Hartland. It was while a pupil at Edgehill College in Bideford that Tope began performing. She threw herself into any and all school plays she could be involved in. These included The Pirates of Penzance, and she took the title role in Joan of Arc.
Tope went on to study drama at Manchester University. It was here she met director Clare Venables, who would form a crucial part of Tope’s creative life.
Tope’s first professional acting job was in 1965, a summer season in Scarborough. This included the original production of Alan Ayckbourn’s play, Meet My Father, later retitled Relatively Speaking. Tope went in to rep, with seasons in Birmingham featuring her in the likes of Blithe Spirit and John Lennon’s In His Own Write.
When Venables began directing at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln, Tope appeared there throughout 1968 and 1969 in productions of Arnold Wesker’s play, Chicken Soup With Barley, The Hostage by Brendan Behan, opposite Brian Protheroe in Hedda Gabler, and in Venables’ revival of Relatively Speaking.
At the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, she appeared with Bob Peck in the world premiere of Edward Bond’s play about an aging Shakespeare, Bingo (1973), then again at the Royal Court a year later with John Gielgud as Shakespeare. Both productions were co-directed by Jane Howell and John Dove, who again would work with Tope many times.
Howell directed Tope in Derek Fuke’s TV play, Mirror, Mirror (1976) as part of the BBC’s Centre Play strand. Also in the cast was Susan Jameson. The pair had been in rep together, and much later would both appear in an episode of long running children’s series, Grandpa in My Pocket (2009).
Tope was offered a lead role in the 1978 TV adaptation of R.F. Delderfield’s A Horseman Riding By, but despite the encouragement of her Glasgow born husband MacIain Service, she turned it down to concentrate on raising their children. Tope and MacIain met at a Christmas drinks party, were engaged within six weeks, and married in March.
Tope’s daughter Maggie Service recalled in an interview in the Sunday Post how, aged five, she and her mother watched her brother John in a school production of Guys and Dolls. Asked by Tope if she was enjoying it, Service said she loved the character of Adelaide, and was confused when Tope replied that was ‘my part’. Tope had played Adelaide in a production of Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows’ Damon Runyan inspired musical directed by David Toguri, who would go on to choreograph Richard Eyre’s acclaimed 1982 National Theatre production. This was the moment Service was inspired to become an actress.
Tope’s return to acting in Oedipus Rex was at the behest of Venables, who insisted she play Jocasta in her new adaptation. As well as her various stints at the Citz, Tope appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival in a Scottish Opera/Nottingham Playhouse, production of Strauss’ Ariadne Auf Naxos (1997), and with Stellar Quines in Wit (2003) by Margaret Edson, and Sylvia Dow’s play, Threads (2015). Tope also appeared in Rapture Theatre’s production of Frozen (2006) by Bryony Lavery. At the Traverse she was in The Tree of Knowledge (2011) by Jo Clifford, and with Lung Ha in 13 Sunken Years (2015), by Finnish writer Paula Salminen.
At the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh she reunited with John Dove, who directed her as Linda Loman in Death of A Salesman (2004), Madame de Rosemonde in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (2006), and Rebecca Nurse in The Crucible (2016). She also appeared in numerous radio dramas, and narrated books from Paul Magrs’ Brenda and Effie series of spooky gothic mysteries.
In 2002, Tope named The Preshal Trust, the Govan based charity set up by MacIain and colleague and family friend May Nicholson to provide support for socially excluded people and families in the area. ‘Preshal’ is Gaelic for ‘Precious’. It is a word that perfectly summed up Tope’s approach to her life and career.
She is survived by her husband, MacIain, their sons, Tom and John, their daughter, Maggie, and three grandchildren, Matilda-Grace, to Tom, and Isla and Amélieto John.
The Herald, January 18th 2025
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