Thomas Hardy protégé back - aged 101

A woman - the last remaining member of a theatre group run by writer Thomas Hardy - took to the stage last night at the age of 101.

Norrie Woodhall is one of the last people alive who knew the acclaimed author and poet. She was a member of the Hardy Players, which disbanded in the 1920s, but reformed two years ago.

Nina Teggarty reports:

It's been a while since Norrie Woodhall been on stage. Yet she still vividly remembers acting with Thomas Hardy as her director:

"He was very, very thoughtful," she says. "Again, he never told the players how to do their parts at all - he left it entirely to the players."

Her fondest recollection dates back to 1924, when she was a teenager and went to Max Gate, Hardy's Dorchester home. Here she and the Hardy Players rehearsed the stage version of 'Tess of the D'urbervilles'. Norrie had only a small part- as Tess's sister Liza-Lu. But Hardy soon rectified this:

"He called me over to him. He was sat at a little table, he looked up at me and said 'I haven't given Liza-Lu much to say have I?'

"He hadn't - all I had to do is rush across the stage, throw myself at my sister and say 'Tess, Tess!'.

"And he asked for my script and he wrote 'I am so glad you've come home'. Then he looked up at me and said: 'That's better isn't it?'"

In the play, Norrie's sister Gertrude played the part of Tess. Hardy apparently took a shine to Gertrude - to the annoyance of his second wife, Florence.

"Oh she was insanely jealous of my sister. Apart from the fact that she was in the public eye and was very beautiful which Mrs Hardy wasn't. But my sister had no idea at the time how jealous she was."

Mrs Hardy was so jealous, says Norrie, that she forced Gertrude to write a letter to Hardy, telling him she would not be joining him and the other actors when the play went to London.

"Mrs Hardy spoke of the fact that he would want to go to London to see her, that it would raise more untrue stories. She gave way in the end to great disappointment to her and to me. She wrote the letter, and Hardy died not knowing the truth."

The Hardy Players disbanded shortly after Gertrude refused to perform in London. But Hardy's poems and writings continue to be an inspiration to the Dorchester locals.

Visiting the players as they rehearsed poems and writings in the church hall, just before that evening's performance, they said Norrie Woodhall was their star act that evening.

"I do feel that Dorchester as a town," she says "doesn't realise that it has something that no other town in the world has: Thomas Hardy."

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