The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Tributes to Pitlochry theatre favourite and High Road star
Theatre bosses have led tributes to star-of-stage-and-screen Edith MacArthur, who died aged 92.
Ms MacArthur was best known for her role as Elizabeth Cunningham in top Scottish soap opera Take the High Road. She appeared in the show’s debut episode in 1980 and proved a hit with viewers before her character was killed in a car crash six years later.
After the show, she became a regular at Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT), appearing in a run of shows from 1988 including Pygmalion, On Golden Pond and Queen of Spades.
The venue’s latest season director Richard Baron said: “I was fortunate enough to direct Edith in four productions at PFT including her memorable Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night and Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Famously elegant and gracious but extremely practical, and possessed of an infectious sense of humour, she was widely regarded as the finest Scottish actress of her generation.” Born in Ardrossan, Ms MacArthur attended Ardrossan Academy and went on to perform at theatres across Scotland and spent seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s.
On TV she also appeared in Dr Findlay’s Casebook and in Hamish Macbeth.
Ms MacArthur, who never married, was made an MBE in 2000 and received an honorary degree from Queen Margaret University in 2001.