From West Footscray to West End star, Coral Browne was larger-than-life.
Leaving Australia as a 21-year old in the 1930's she forged a reputation first as a popular West End performer and later a brilliant classical actor with The Old Vic and The National.
Coral also had many memorable screen performances, including Auntie Mame (as Vera Charles) The Killing of Sister George (as Mercy Croft), Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (as Alice Hargreaves) and Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad in which she famously played herself touring to Moscow with Hamlet and encountering the British spy Guy Burgess. It earned her a BAFTA award for Best Actress.
Coral was almost as well known for her bawdy wit, her glamour, her liberated attitude to sex, her string of famous lovers - including Paul Robeson and Maurice Chevalier - and her late-life marriage to horror-movie icon Vincent Price.
They don't make them like this any more!
In the Melbourne premiere of this one-woman play, Genevieve Mooy (The Dish, Frontline) brings Coral Browne to sparkling life and puts this true Grande Dame back in the spotlight where she belongs.
Writer and director Maureen Sherlock has previously written popular comedy shows Alzheimer's the Musical: A Night to Remember and Ada & Elsie: Wacko-the -Diddle-oh!
ticket price: $30 - $40
bookings: 03 9662 9966
fortyfivedownstairs
45 Flinders Lane
Melbourne 3000
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