Peggy Phango

Peggy Phango (28 December 1928 – 7 August 1998) was a South African actress and singer based in England.

Early life

Peggy Phango was born at Orlando, Transvaal. She trained as a nurse, but also sang in jazz clubs, as a young woman.[1][2]

Career

In 1959, Phango was cast to replace her cousin,[3] Miriam Makeba, in the female lead of the musical King Kong, about a South African boxer. Phango first appeared on the London stage in 1961, in the same show.[4] In 1988, she played "Bloody Mary" in a London revival of South Pacific.[1] She was in a vocal group with fellow King Kong cast members, Patience Gowabe and Hazel Futa, called the Velvettes; they sang backup for Cyril Davies and his All-Stars in clubs in the 1960s.[5] She also recorded an album with Dudu Pukwana's band Zila.[2]

Phango also acted in non-musical roles on stage, including such shows as You Can't Take it With You, The Crucible, The Little Foxes, and Fishing, the first play by Paulette Randall.[6] She toured as Rose in Stepping Out in the 1980s, and was one of the South Africans who both appeared in and contributed their personal experiences to the show Ekhaya in 1991.[7]

She appeared on British television regularly, notably in EastEnders and an adaptation of The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole. Her appearances in television dramas about South Africa included roles in Victims of Apartheid (1978), Prisoners of Conscience (1981), The Biko Inquest (1984), and Death is a Part of the Process (1986), the last based on a novel by Hilda Bernstein.[1] Shortly before her death she appeared as the character Mrs Wald, in the first episode of a long-running television show, Lynda La Plante's Trial and Retribution.[2]

Personal life

Peggy Phango married English jazz pianist Johnny Parker in 1965, as his second wife. They had two daughters, Abigail and Beverly. Phango died in 1998, aged 69, in London.[8]

References
  1. Tom Vallance, "Obituary: Peggy Phango" Independent (2 September 1998).
  2. Michael Knipe, "From Tradesman's Daughter to Stage Queen" Mail & Guardian (21 August 1998).
  3. Tanisha Ford, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style and the Global Politics of Soul (UNC Press, 2015): 15–16. ISBN 9781469625164
  4. "King Kong South African Musical, Hailed in London, is Set for Broadway", Ebony (December 1961): 80–81.
  5. Tony Bacon, London Live: From the Yardbirds to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols (Hal Leonard, 1999): 49. ISBN 9780879305727
  6. Alda Terracciano, "Mainstreaming African, Asian, and Caribbean Theatre: The Experiments of the Black Theatre Forum" in Dimple Godiwala, ed., Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatre (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008): 25–26. ISBN 9781443802864
  7. Geoffrey V. Davis, Voices of Justice and Reason: Apartheid and Beyond in South African Literature (Rodopi, 2003): pg 243. ISBN 9789042008267
  8. Peter Vacher, "Johnny Parker Obituary", The Guardian (21 June 2010).
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