Josie Lawrence is good at making optimism feel human, and at working with other actors rather than crowding them out. We value her warmth and improvisational skill; the enthusiasm sometimes needs firmer handling.
Fi1m perspective
In Enchanted April (1991), Josie Lawrence's Lottie Wilkins brings an eagerness that the film needs, though not always in the quantities it allows. She gives us a reason to stay with a drama whose romantic optimism comes too easily. We warmed to Lottie because Lawrence makes her enthusiasm seem sincere. Beside Miranda Richardson's Rose Arbuthnot and Polly Walker's Caroline Dester, she helps sustain our interest when the writing offers too little friction. We would not recommend the film without reservations, but its actors make a quiet evening with it worth considering.
Her improvisational work helps explain why she is useful in an ensemble. Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988) brought her to wider attention, with spontaneous songs a particular strength; her work with the Comedy Store Players also places her among performers such as Paul Merton and Jim Sweeney. That kind of comedy depends on taking another performer's suggestion seriously enough to do something with it. It is a useful skill in a quieter film, too, where an actor's enthusiasm can give others something to respond to.
The limit is how much encouragement a script needs. Mike Newell's Enchanted April leans too heavily on the appeal of Lawrence and her fellow performers when it ought to allow more disagreement between them. Her fussiness can become broad, and more restraint would sometimes let Lottie's optimism register without such insistence. Yet asking Lawrence to supply the missing difficulty would be asking her to rewrite the part. Our reservation is chiefly with a film that makes its characters' troubles too easy to overcome.
The work beyond comedy gives a better guide to her abilities than the assumption that an improviser is only there for laughs. Her Kate in the RSC's The Taming of the Shrew (1995) belongs to a substantial parallel stage career. A Clever Woman (2023), in which she plays Dot, is fully improvised and concerns family, memory and bereavement. There is no reason that method should be confined to finding the next joke. For a first encounter, try Enchanted April, provided an accommodating script does not spoil the pleasure of good company.
Biography
Josie Lawrence is an English actress and comedian. Born Wendy Lawrence on 6 June 1959 in Old Hill, Staffordshire, she studied theatre at Dartington College of Arts in Devon.
She came to prominence as a regular performer on the improvisational series Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988–1998). Her film work includes the role of Lottie Wilkins in Enchanted April (1991). On television she has played Manda Best in EastEnders and Agnes Nutter in Good Omens (2019). Lawrence has a substantial stage career with the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a founding member of the Comedy Store Players; she received the Dame Peggy Ashcroft Award for Best Actress for her performance as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.
