From the 1970s she had a long and productive association with the playwright Peter Barnes, appearing in his original works and his radio and stage adaptations of plays by authors from Thomas Otway to Frank Wedekind and Georges Feydeau.

[2] Laye made her stage début at the New Lindsey Theatre Club, Notting Hill in April 1948, playing a boy, Moritz Scharf, in The Burning Bush, Noel Langley's drama about state persecution of Jews.

[2][5] In the 1948–49 Christmas season she played Bobby, the nephew of the wicked Baron de Rostonveg ("Monsewer" Eddie Gray) in the pantomime Babes in the Wood at the Prince's Theatre, London.

[9] At the Hippodrome in May 1953 Laye appeared in the revue High Spirits, starring Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill, in a supporting cast including Ian Carmichael, Joan Sims and Patrick Cargill.

[10] In April 1954 she was in another revised version of the New Lindsey revue, presented at the Criterion Theatre as Intimacy at 8.30, alongside Sims, Joan Heal, Ron Moody and Ronnie Stevens.

[11] Laye made her Broadway début in September 1954, playing Dulcie in the musical The Boy Friend opposite Julie Andrews (as Polly), with whom she shared a flat for much of the 485-performance run.

[4] Andrews wrote of her friend's performance: During this period, The Stage recorded, Laye "was dated by a handsome young actor called James Baumgarner, whose career took off when he changed his surname to Garner".

[4][22] In 1967 she had a cameo role in Charlie Chaplin's romantic film comedy A Countess from Hong Kong, playing a scene opposite Marlon Brando.

[4] In 1968 Laye moved from light comedy to play Mrs Shin in Bertold Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan at the Oxford Playhouse, with Hancock in the title role.

[2] At the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1969 she played Polly Butler in Children's Day, a comedy by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, co-starring with Prunella Scales, Edward de Souza and Gerald Flood.

[2] In 1973 Laye began an enduring professional association with the playwright Peter Barnes, playing Gertrude in his adaptation of the early 17th-century comedy Eastward Ho!

[31] Her later West End credits included the musicals Nine in 1997 and Into the Woods in 1998, both at the Donmar Warehouse, a Mother Courage figure in Barnes's mediaeval play Dreaming at the Queen's (1999),[32] Elizabeth II in Single Spies in 2000,[33] and Mrs Pearce in Trevor Nunn's revival of My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 2002.

[34] Laye featured as Madame de Rosemond in a revival of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Playhouse Theatre in 2004, receiving the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting actress.

[1][4][36] Her final stage work came in 2006 in the three roles of Miss La Creevy, Mrs Gudden, and Peg Sliderskew in the Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of the RSC's epic Nicholas Nickleby.