As Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies reached her late seventies, opportunities to play roles in the theatre became scarce. Although she enjoyed successes in challenging roles such as Mary Tyrone and Amanda Wingfield, these parts were younger than her actual age. When she was cast in more age-appropriate roles, the results could be less rewarding. In 1966 she played older than her real age in A Present for the Past by John Hailstone, as the elderly but spirited Baroness matriarch whose family life is disrupted by the arrival of a handsome lodger. The play had its premier as part of the Edinburgh Festival at the Royal Lyceum Theatre and was not a success, described in the Times as ‘a well upholstered vehicle for star actresses’, with Ffrangcon-Davies playing a ‘vivacious octogenarian’ with ‘style and a touch of justifiable grandeur’. The Times review is, rather ironically, entitled ‘Actresses Seize Opportunities in New Play’, but the lukewarm reviews precipitated a disappointingly short run for the production. Ffrangcon-Davies was brought low by the news that the play would not transfer to London as planned, but she was reassured by Marda Vanne that it was ‘Better that way, perhaps, than a spectacular flop in London’.

The disappointment precipitated a break of four years before she returned to the London stage to perform as Madam Voynitsky in Uncle Vanya at the Royal Court (1970).