In Memory of
Rosemary Biggs
28. 07. 1935 – 23. 05. 2022
Ray Hopper writes in the August 2022 Newsletter : ” Four of us attended Rosemary’s funeral at Shoreham Baptist Church, June 20 and and learnt from Pastor Ray Orr that she had worshipped there since moving to Shoreham as a divorcee in 1975, when she was then Rosemary Boulton. She was well known to Pastor Ray, who described her as a “Feisty Lady”, as befitted an Essex girl.
She had trained at Catering College and subsequently worked at Harrods, London Zoo and the Royal Opera House, and was involved with several Essex amateur drama groups, and also became an expert flower arranger.
Her first appearance with the Wick was in May 1977, as Arabel, a family member in The Barrett’s of Wimpole Street. She met and married Jim Biggs, who then also joined the Wick, and their joint first appearances as the Biggs was in December 1980 in The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by the West Sussex CC Drama Adviser, George Rawlings. She played the eccentric Mlle. Gabrielle to good notices.
April 1982 saw her playing her favourite Wick character, as Karen Nash in the first part of Neil Simon’s three-part Plaza Suite, The Visitor from Mamaroneck, as a wife desperately trying to save her marriage to Brian Moulton’s Sam.
In February 1985, she made her directorial debut with Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest. This received reasonable reviews, but it was her only attempt at directing.
She appeared in minor roles in a number of other productions, including both parts of our Alice in Wonderland double bill. Her last stage appearance was as Grace Poole in our March 1990 production of Jane Eyre.
Throughout her years with Wick she provided the floral displays in the foyer of the Community Centre during our production week, with her last one being for our New Year 1998 production of The Adventures of Mr. Toad, which closed the old Barn Theatre before its reconstruction.
After this she became a regular attender at our play reading evenings, until increasing frailty prevented
her getting out easily. However, she was determined to see our 2018 re production of Plaza Suite, and I was delighted that her son managed to get her there, and that I was able to meet her in the audience and receive her forthright views on the production, in which she had appeared 36 years earlier.
So we lose another valuable contributor to Wick life.
[In another astonishing Wick coincidence, our 2018’s Karen Nash, Barbara Isaacs, died just afew weeks before Rosemary.]