Galleries: Theatrical Portraits

Sheila Reid as Gower in Pericles, Sam Wanamaker Theatre, London 2016.

Oil on linen,
29”x 25”

This portrait of Sheila Reid is based on photographs that Carol took backstage of Sheila in costume  at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre during the 2015 production of Pericles. Sheila was playing the character of ‘Gower’. Gower acts as the narrator summing  up parts of the story that would be too complicated to show and also offers the moral guidance shown in the play.

Sheila Reid has had a long and distinguished career in theatre, film and television, and worked with Laurence Olivier at the Royal National Theatre. In 1980, she played the long-suffering wife of Trevor Howard in Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. She played Mrs. Buttle in Terry Gilliam's 1985 cult classic Brazil the same year she appeared as Etta in the dystopian Doctor Who serial Vengeance on Varos, Years later, in the revived incarnation of the series, she twice appeared as the grandmother of companion Clara Oswald The Time of the Doctor in 2013 and Dark Water in 2014.She  appeared in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small as Mrs Donavan, a rather eccentric woman offering treatments to animals in rivalry to James Herriot and Siegried Farnon, and also had a brief appearance in the first series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet. From 2007 onward, she has appeared as Madge Harvey in Benidorm. She made an appearance in the final episode of series 1 of BBC Two's 2009 sitcom Psychoville as an old crone; and as an old lady in the 2012 Christmas special edition of Call the Midwife.

She plays Bob Servant's mother in the BBC4 production Bob Servant  and she also appeared as the wife of D.C.I. Frank Haskins in the last series of The Sweeney in the episode "Victims".

Reid's musical theatre credits include the roles of the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd in 1993 at the National Theatre, and Jack's Mother in Into the Woods in 1998 at the Donmar Warehouse.