Patricia Englund Featured in 'Outward Bound'

Actress and director Patricia Englund, of Westport, will perform in a staged reading of Outward Bound March 12-13 in Norwalk. 

Outward Bound, written by Sutton Vane,  is an installment in the Theater Artists Workshop  Classic Night Reading series.  The production also will feature veteran actors James Noble and Norman Allen of Norwalk, Katie Sparer of Stratford,  Richard Hartley and Richard Leonard of Greenwich, Damien Langan of Bridgeport, Carrie Pine of Glastonbury and guest actor Damian Long.

The play tells the story of a disparate group of passengers who find themselves aboard a darkened, fog-enshrouded crewless ship, sailing to an unknown destination. Who they are and where they end up will be revealed in performance. 

"My character is Mrs. Cliveden-Banks," Englund said.  "She always reminds people that her last name is hyphenated. She is  a self-regarding, superstitious, would-be society lady, who wants everyone to know her name." 

During an interview with Westport Patch, Englund noted that she relishes her longstanding relationship with Theatre Artists Workshop. She stands among a small few who joined the group during its first meeting on Feb. 14, 1983.

Originally known as Theatre Artists Workshop of Westport, the troupe was founded  by actor Keir Dullea and his wife, the late Susie Fuller, who died in 1998.

"Susie was the wonderful force behind this workshop," Englund said. "I loved her dearly and I miss her. It's amazing that so many years have gone by since we got our start." 

At its inception, the workshop was modeled after Los Angeles' Theatre East Workshop, and was designed as a safe place where theater professionals were allowed to hone their crafts, experiment, develop new plays and work with and get feedback from fellow actors, writers and directors in an intimate setting. 

The upcoming Classic Night reading is an example of the workshop's  evolution, notes Englund.

"Theater Artists Workshop was not a production company when it started. It was a place where members could work on their crafts," she added. "The workshop still has its original function, but look how it has evolved. There is a hunger for theater in Fairfield County and what we present is regarded as something worth seeing.  Theatre Artists Workshop productions get an enormous reception."

Director Mark Basile originated the workshop's Classic Night series nearly 13 years ago. "Outward Bound is exactly the type of play I envisioned when I thought about a Classic Night reading," Basile said in a press release. "It was the biggest hit of the 1923 London theater season and it has been redone in at least two films since it appeared onstage, one starring Leslie Howard, the other starring John Garfield, but it has rarely been seen onstage over the years."

Englund is hardly a stranger to the stage. She appeared on Broadway with Charlton Heston in As You Like It  and, in 1947, she joined the cast of Oklahoma as Ado Annie shortly after its London premier.

 She had a role in the 1957 film Stage Struck, which starred Henry Fonda and was directed by Sidney Lumet.  On television, she appeared in the series Lovers and Friends in 1974 and the daytime drama For Richer, For Poorer in 1977 .  In 1999 she appeared in the television movie Last Wish with Patty Duke.

"For a time, I also performed a a one-woman show, Things I Learned at My Mother's Knee and Other Low Joints," she added.

"These days I am more interested in directing," she reports. "I've been directing for 25 years and always been pleased with the work I've done." 

Her local directing credits include overseeing a production of Celebrating Ulysses, presented during the Bloomsday commemoration at the Westport Library in 2004.

The celebration marked the 100-year anniversary of  June 16, 1904, the day on which James Joyce's novel Ulysses  takes place. Celebrations of Bloomsday, named for the book's principle character, Leopold Bloom, were held in more than 60 countries worldwide by admirers of a book that was banned in the United States as obscene for 15 years after its publication in Paris in 1922. 

Englund comes from a show business background. Her  mother is the late Mabel Albertson, who was a familiar guest star on many television prgorams in the 1960s. "She played everybody's mother," said Englund, laughing.

Most notable was Albertson's recurring role of the disapproving, bewildered mother-in-law of Elizabeth Montgomery's  "Samantha Stephens" in Bewitched.  She  was the clinging mother of "Howard Sprague" on Mayberry and later mother of "Donald Hollinger" in That Girl.  In Peter Bogdanovich's comedy What's Up, Doc, she played "Mrs. Van Hoskins."

Englund's  uncle is the late actor Jack Alberston, who was the eighth performer to win the Triple Crown of acting. He received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (The Subject Was Roses, 1968);  a  Tony for Best Supporting Actor (The Subject Was Roses, 1965) and an Emmy for Best Actor-Comedy Series, (Chico and the Man, 1974). 

He also appeared in the 1971 film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and opposite Shelley Winters in the film Poseidon Adventure (1972). 

Her  father, Ken Englund, a film and television writer whose credits included the screenplay for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, died in 1992.

Theater Artists Workshop's Classic Night series is free and the public is welcome.  The peformance begins at 8 p.m. There are no reservations and donations are accepted at the door.

 The next public performance is a Shakespearean Classic Night, with a presentation of  Twelfth Night, April 16 and 17, at 8 p.m.  For information call 203-854-6830 or visit www.taworkshop.org.   Performances take plae at the Old Well Masonic Lodge, 5 Gregorgy Boulevard, in Norwalk.