Next week, Penelope Keith returns to Richmond Theatre to star in Richard Everett’s comedy Entertaining Angels, a play she first appeared in at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2006, writes Victoria Kingston.

Although, thanks to a bit of rewriting, this version of the play is different to the one she performed in three years ago.

“We opened originally at Chichester and then we did a tour,” she explains. “It was all very successful but the producer felt it should be longer and asked Richard to look at it again so it was reworked while we were doing it. There are no huge differences in this new version, except one character doesn’t appear any more.”

In the play Keith plays Grace, a vicar’s widow, who is experiencing some newly found freedom after the death of her husband.

“Grace has to cope with recent widowhood and she faces the difficulty that she was an adjunct to her husband’s business – the church,” says Keith.

“Suddenly, she loses her house and her identity, as well as her husband. When we first did the play, I had a lot of letters from women who identified strongly with her. I think it does help to know other people have suffered in the same way as yourself – you don’t feel so apart from the rest of society.”

Keith will always be famous for her TV roles in The Good Life and To The Manor Born but she doesn’t do so much television work these days.

“There aren’t that many plays on TV now, are there?” she says. “And I was trained for the theatre. In fact, I have never been away from the theatre for more than 18 months.”

In recent years, Keith has starred in some acclaimed productions at Richmond Theatre, including The Importance of Being Earnest and Blithe Spirit.

“I certainly think these plays have great roles for women and very witty dialogue,” she adds. “I think you can learn a lot more from comedy than drama. Shakespeare was clever enough to know a little laughter helped a tragic play along. In a lot of the roles I’ve played, the laughter has come out of a situation that is maybe not tragic but certainly fairly bleak.

“Our director for Entertaining Angels, Alan Strachan, said at the beginning of rehearsals that all the great plays are about families. And it’s true. We all relate to families of some kind.”

Entertaining Angels, Richmond Theatre, October 5 to 11, visit ambassadortickets.com