BEST known as a theatrical trouper — was there no role she could not play on stage? — Avril Angers had a way of getting audiences to take her to their hearts. Either as a singer or dancer, dramatic actress or exponent of revue or musical comedy, Angers was nothing if not versatile.

She mastered the art as a teenage player of being able to project a sense of fun wherever it was happening — over the wireless, in films, on television or the stage; and even in old age she could be counted on to play aunts and mothers with an engaging lightness of touch.

In farces or thrillers, musical comedies or pantomimes, and sometimes as the foil for the most expert television comics of the day, Angers brought self-assurance and authority to the stage. What she established in the theatre was atmosphere: her acting had a way of setting the scene; though with comics like Fred Emney, Frankie Howerd, Arthur Askey, Benny Hill and Les Dawson she played remarkably straight.

Not that Angers was at ease only in light comedy. It is true that this was how she began, but later she could deliver a barbed witticism in revue, or strike a heartbreaking note in a Noël Coward song, or deliver a monologue with pathos.

In a classic revival — as Mrs Hardcastle in Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, or as Miss Prue in Congreve’s Love for Love — she could sometimes come into her own.

Often she wrote her own (mainly comic) material, which she used as an adolescent in pre-war summer shows, and on the lyric stage — especially in revue, which was in vogue almost throughout her early career. She was often compared to the most brilliant exponents of the genre, such as the two Hermiones (Gingold and Baddeley).

What Angers revelled in was the quick-change, sharp-witted, satirical musical show popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Her parents already worked in the theatre; hence her education at various schools in England and Australia. It was at a concert party at the Palace Pier, Brighton, in 1936 that Avril Angers made her first theatrical appearance. With her slim figure, high spirits, tuneful voice and good looks, she was soon to join the Tiller Girls.

At Birmingham she made an impression in the 1936 Cinderella (Alexandra Theatre) before taking on light concert work from 1937-44. In 1940 she was with the Fol-de-Rols, a touring revue, and then for five years with Ensa, the Entertainments National Service Association, which provided shows for the troops at home and abroad.

She began broadcasting for the BBC radio service in 1944 when she made her first West End appearance — in the Cyril Fletcher-Betty Astell revue, Keep Going, at the Palace. At the Winter Garden Theatre in 1945 in the Leslie Henson show, Gaieties, she showed, according to the critic J. C. Trewin, “how cunningly moonstruck she could be”. In Make it a Date (Duchess, 1946), a revue led by Max Wall, she “had a more rewarding chance”. She contrives “to be at once both matter-of-fact and fiercely boisterous. The Herbs-and-Simples monologue proves that she is of the Baddeley-Gingold clan”.

In search of straight-play experience, Angers moved for a season to the Connaught Theatre, Worthing, (1949). As “a guest artist”, she played Miss Prue in Congreve’s Love for Love; then the title role in Aimee Stuart’s Jeannie, the 1940 hit for the Scottish actress Barbara Mullen.

Other leading roles which she found out of town included Madeleine in Sacha Guitry’s sophisticated French comedy, Don’t Listen, Ladies, and the wise-cracking American dumb blonde, Billie Dawn, in Garson Kanin’s hit, Born Yesterday.

In 1951 she returned to the West End as Dolores in the farce, Mary Had a Little . . . (Strand, 1951). But pantomime moved her more. As Robinson Crusoe, Angers spent seasons at Wimbledon (1953) and Folkestone (1955).

After the try-out of a peculiar American comedy, The Night Life of a Virile Potato (Lyric, Hammersmith, 1960), Angers went to Australia in the revue Paris by Night for most of 1962. After returning to England for out-of-town parts in 1964, she found herself heading the company as the elder Belle Poitrine in an imported American musical comedy, Little Me, (Cambridge) which Neil Simon adapted from Patrick Dennis’s novel. As B. A. Young wrote: “

Avril Angers plays her in maturity — an admirable but unrewarding performance, since she always appears in her little linking scenes on the tail of someone else’s applause. She has a duet with her younger self, Eileen Gourlay, at the end, to show what a talented performer she really is when she gets the chance.”

In the 1970s Angers again played opposite Max Wall in Cockie! (Vaudeville), stopping the show at one point “with her brilliant, heartbreaking” version of Coward’s song, If Love Were All.

In Norman, Is That You? (Phoenix) Angers partnered the television comedian, Harry Worth, and in the exceptionally long-running comedy, No Sex, Please, We’re British (Strand, 1975) she took over the role of the mother-in-law, Eleanor Hunter.

After touring as Miss Skillon in the farce See How They Run, Angers took over as Miss Marple in Murder at the Vicarage (Savoy); and in the 1980s appeared in two of Coward’s one-act plays, Easy Virtue and Post-Mortem (King’s Head, Islington).

Inevitably she seized every chance of pantomime at Croydon, Richmond, Bath and Eastbourne. Finally, she played the Mother in the Gershwin musical, Crazy for You (Prince Edward, 1993).

Her television credits included Dad’s Army, All Creatures Great and Small, Are You Being Served?, Minder, Coronation Street and The Tomorrow People. Among her films were Skimpy in the Navy, Lucky Mascot, The Green Man, Devils of Darkness, The Family Way, Staircase, A Girl in My Soup and Two a Penny.

Avril Angers, actress and singer, was born on April 18, 1918. She died on November 9, 2005, aged 87.