whatever

I thought I would pop this on here instead of starting a new thread.

I went to see Much Ado About Nothing last night. It was absolutely magical, I thought after watching Henry VI part III a couple of months ago I might not be able to top that, but this play was a polished performance by all the cast. Of course Tamsin was spellbinding, and it is true about tv, she appears alot slimmer face to face. She really has great arms too either a gym lady or ashtanga yoga we reckon!
It was such a riot, who had the first idea to transfer the setting to 1950's Cuba was truly inspired. The dancing, music, had everyone enticed. Plus once again Tamsin gets enough long lingering embrace with another gorgeous leading man!

Daimien Lewis(?) who was in Band of Brothers was in the audience too along with his I guess very pregnant wife/girlfriend? He chatted with people and signed some autographs too appeared very charming.
If anyone can get tickets to see MAAN then I highly reccommend it it was out of this world....and its along time since I studied Shakespeare but I now I know why I enjoyed reading his plays so much they rock!

wow! lucky you! i'm glad you had such a good time!

makes me seem really boasty starting a whole new thread lol! I'm not sure i've heard about the person in the audience though, i might recognise his face...

And Shakespeare rocks indeed heehee did you get chance to scare Tamsin in the dark and meet her? haahaa I dom't think you'd need to after such a great night's entertainment! So did you get good seats? The swan's such a small place you get a good view anywhere though! haahaa

Thank god for the west-end! Thanks for the review xxx

I think i just realised who damain lewis is! Is he an actor with gingery-red hair? In the 'shakespeare re-told' version of much ado on the bbc?

Yes that is him, he was also in Stephen Poliakoff's recent new dramas Crocodiles and ?, he is a top actor.

No I didn't venture to the stage door exit, I have to be honest I am rather shy and would probably spoke a lot of nonsense, plus when we walked past there were already 5 or 6 people waiting with pens poised, obviously they may have been there for other actors too. I would have liked to get a photograph but it was rather dark (listen to me making excuses!) if I had have gone with my friend she would have marched right up there, but my boyfriend just said go on if you want too, alas I did not. Nay mind.

There were about 10 people waiting for returns when we got there about 30 mins before it started and when we came back in 10 mins before they had all disappeared so whether they all got them or not I'm not sure. I also heard this chap in a cafe say to someone that he regulary goes into the main box office when it opens and that he gets returns quite often.

I also looked into where the play will be staged in London soon. I was wonering if it work as well at the Novello theatre. I looked on thearte monkey website and it tells you all about the seating plans etc and I'm not quite sure how it will work not being on a thrust stage. At the Swan, the thrust stage was integral to the performance. I'm sure there is a way they transfer it, plus I have never been to the Novello (previously the Strand) but from reviews some people say the seating is cramped and if you get someone tall in front of you etc. Which you do not get at the Swan or Courtyard theatres.

Ok must stop rambling to my self on a Sunday morning...

Well i appreciate your rambling! lol Yup i was a bit reluctant about the new theatre, i think thrust stages are the best because the actors and audiences are a lot closer with eacher, like they're in the same room, not seperated like in the main RST in stratford. I think the RSC are actually turning that into a thrust stage after this festival has finished anyways!

I might have to very convenientley take a trip to stratford on a Much ado performance day, and just casually check for returns with my mum! They got us much better seats when we were sent wrong tickets for king john, so it's worth a try!

sorry i meant the actors/audience are closer to EACHOTHER, not 'eacher' haahaa i should make up a dictionary of typos, or something, i'm always spelling things very wrongly!

Damien Lewis is also in Stormbreaker - amongst other things. He's a good actor!

Thanks for the review Swissgirl it's fab!

I STILL need to see stormbreaker! I'm ashamedly behind on movies right now

BUMP!

Its good!!!!!!!!

B~U~M~P

thanks i shall try! and thankee for Bumpage!

woops. i just tried to post an article with Tamsin, and it had some VERY naughty words in it uh-oh!

I'll try again: An interview with the wonderous Tamsin! (hopefully no naughty words)...

The eyebrows have it
After the slapstick of Green Wing, how will Tamsin Greig play the Bard, asks Stephen Armstrong


It is surprisingly hard to arrange an interview with Tamsin Greig. During weeks of negotiation, it proved easier to speak to the infamously complicated Teri Hatcher than the woman who plays Debbie Aldridge in The Archers. For a while, it seemed as if sitcom success had created a diva who demanded examples of previous work and the right to screen the photographer. Hollywood habits can spread quickly as actors climb the ladder of fame.

When Greig finally bustles in on the day of the chat, however, she couldn’t be more charming. She cracks a series of self-deprecating jokes, orders cheese on toast and confesses that she finds the whole idea of interviews slightly peculiar. “I do find myself thinking — why would anyone want to do one? There’s a part of me that thinks I’ve got nothing of value to say at all and, really, there are a lot of pages out there that have to be filled. Still, we get some nice cheese on toast, so it’s a nice hour, and it’s not like working in a coal mine.”

And she laughs the first of her big, delightful Tamsin Greig laughs. She lets them roar out a lot during the hour, often at herself, and she has a nice line in kooky gags that makes it easy to confuse her with one of her ditsy, slightly mad singleton characters — Fran in Black Books, or Dr Caroline Todd in Green Wing. When she finally got her own starring role, in last year’s David Renwick romance Love Soup, she played a slightly bemused, offbeat shop girl called Alice. The typecasting seemed complete.

“Maybe its because I’ve got such heavy eyebrows,” she grins. “Close up on TV, my eyebrows have to do something, and they do work very well at looking surprised.”

Her next appearance in front of our eyes allows plenty of scope for eyebrow action. Green Wing returns to Channel 4 at the end of the month, and Greig is reprising her role as Dr Todd, the slightly lovesick but otherwise relatively normal physician at the strangest hospital in the world. She manages to play her attempts to re-woo fellow doctor Julian Rhind-Tutt — who has had his memory of their affair wiped by a coma — with a curious sensitivity in the middle of the show’s slapstick buffoonery. It therefore comes as something of a shock to learn that she was breastfeeding her three-month-old third child throughout filming.

“What was I thinking of? Why did I do that?” She shakes her head in astonishment. “It was terrible. I was filming Love Soup and Green Wing at the same time, going to Birmingham to do Debbie, and I went to Cardiff as well, to do a bit of Doctor Who. That was one of the most terrifying experiences. Trying to remember lines when you can’t remember to wash. And some of the lines have sci-fi words like ‘introspike’ in them.”

Then she suddenly cackles. “That’s why you’ll find, if you look quite closely, the three parts are actually all the same person. One has a lollop and a hair clip, one has her hair on the other side, and that’s about it.”

Post-Green Wing, however, she’s about to throw the kooky stuff away and get serious. From April, she joins Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival, the company’s bold attempt to perform or host every one of Shakespeare’s plays. Greig plays Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (“the Emma Thompson part, who I will be stealing every gag off”) and Constance in King John.

“That’s not a ditsy role,” she says. “She wants to be queen mother because she craves power herself. Her son is kidnapped and killed, so she loses not only her position but the only thing she has to live for. It’s quite heavy. I’m telling my kids to come to the one where I’m dancing and telling jokes, not the one where I’m tearing my hair and lying on the floor.”

It’s because of her three children with her husband, the actor Richard Leaf, that she almost didn’t take the job. “Ten years ago, I would have died to have had a year like this — Love Soup, Green Wing and the RSC,” she nods thoughtfully. “Now, to be honest, it’s a bit tricky. I think I’d rather do the school run. Because I’m going to have to go and live in Stratford, without my children full- time, for just over three months. I only get two weeks off in August and two weeks off at Easter, so I was reluctant to take the job.”

It’s hugely ironic that her relationship with her family should be thus affected by her success, as she only got into acting in the first place to get her father’s attention. “I was this terrible middle-child show-off — desperate for him to notice me,” she explains. “My dad was retired and my mum worked, so he brought us up. He was born in 1905, a down-the-line Edwardian, and he didn’t show his emotions. He was immensely practical, and if something had to be done, he just did it. But he had to cope with this girl who wanted something from him he didn’t know how to give. I don’t think he enjoyed it. I think it was humbling for him. Towards the end of his life, he would say he’d been a ‘bloody fool, just a bloody fool’.”

Recently, however, she was moved to find out how pleased her parents were with her and her sisters. Although her parents’ marriage was fiery, when her father died in 1998, her mother pined slowly away, ultimately dying of a brain tumour. After she’d gone, Greig received a letter, via the Archers fan club, from a woman who’d been in the same hospital, recognised Greig’s voice and spoke to her mum, saying that she must be very proud of her daughter. “And I didn’t know this — mum didn’t tell me — but the woman wrote in the letter, ‘And your mum said, yes, I am very proud. I’m very proud of all my daughters.’”

She mists up for a moment. “The whole thought that your parents are proud of you, especially to find that out when they aren’t there any more, does put one’s insignificant achievements into a cocked hat, and make you realise that what’s important is relationships, that we are loved, not that you manage to walk in a funny way on telly. It was a little bit like something from heaven.”

She talks easily about heaven, perhaps because it’s a relatively recent part of her world-view. She discovered Christianity aged 30, after a positively anti-religious upbringing. “I’d done it the world’s way — do what you want, look after yourself — and it got to the point where I’d caused more damage than I would care to mention, and it didn’t work,” she explains seriously, but without the alarming intensity of the typical born-again convert. “When I came to faith, I thought I would have to stop being an actor, because it’s all about artifice and manipulation. But we’re living in a world where God doesn’t really have an influence, unless it’s fundamentalists, so I’ll always be an outsider because of my faith. And when you think about it, faith and acting are all about stories, so the two are not mutually exclusive. I decided to try to use what I’d been given in a creative way.”

She pauses and thinks for a second. “It sounds like I’m saying, ‘If I can do the right thing, play the right parts and give a really wholesome interview, then it will be better’, but it probably isn’t. Someone will be reading this saying, ‘Who does she think she is? She hasn’t got anything of value to say, she isn’t going to change my life.’ And it’s probably true.”

So we’re back to the thorny subject of the interview again. Briefly, she turns the spotlight on me, asking how I can be sure I won’t get her completely wrong. “It’s quite a responsibility for you because you could do whatever you wanted.” Her eyes are piercing as she stares me down. “I’d love to meet the guy who wrote my first interview, 15 years ago — the headline was Topless Tamsin Joins The Archers. I’d love to meet that guy and say, does that bother you? Obviously not. It didn’t bother you. It came out on my birthday, when I was in my early twenties, and it really bothered me.” Then she shrugs — what can you do? “You’re going to write what you’re going to write, so I can only speak the truth as I know it.” She smiles. “So now how do you feel?”

And another...a bit random but hey-ho!

Drama queen

BAFTA nominated actress, Tamsin Greig, lives in Kensal Green with her husband, actor Rick Leaf, and their three children. For 15 years she has played the part of Debbie in Radio Four’s The Archers but is better known for her roles in Black Books, Green Wing and Love Soup. Interview ANNA MACARTHUR Photography JEMMA ALLETT

How did you get into acting?
After university I joined an agency and was asked to audition for the part of Debbie in The Archers for Radio Four. It came completely out of the blue. I was surprised to get the part because I couldn’t even turn the pages of the script over without the sound getting picked up on the microphone. I did a lot of fringe theatre in London and some small bits on different sitcoms. I got my big break on Black Books in 2000 and bizarrely became known as a comedy actress. I never thought I’d be doing comedy because I’d been doing very dramatic Shakespearean acting for years.

Tamsin Greig, Do you get recognized much?
Because people have seen Green Wing I’m noticed much more this year than I ever have been before. People in Brent are so unashamed. They’ll come straight over to you and say ‘it’s you isn’t it - off of the telly’?’ Or two people will just stand there, stare and point. They just want confirmation really. They’re not sure who your character is they just know they’ve seen you on TV.

Some people get me confused with my screen roles. My character from The Archers is in Hungary so people have been coming over to ask me what it’s like in there and when am I going back to Ambridge?

Were you born and bred in Brent?
I moved to Kilburn with my parents and two sisters when I was three years old.We lived in one of those old mansion blocks in Exeter Road and I went to Malorees Junior School. At 18 I left to go to university in Birmingham. I never thought I would return because I hated living in London. But in 1996 when my Dad became ill I moved back to be close to my parents. It was a big year for me because I was a coming home in every sense: I started going to church, found God, met Rick and bought my flat in Kensal Green. Brent was the only place I found peace in the end.

Where are your favourite places in Brent?
I tend to spend a lot of time in Graceland’s café on College Road in Kensal Green. It was an answer to a prayer when it opened in 2005. It’s somewhere you can come with the children and get a fantastic latte and no one’s offended when your kids smear jam on their trousers. The thought of not having to cook fills me with great joy. I love the high ceilings, the coffee noises and the tables which look like they have a story to tell. Roundwood Park is also great because the kids can ride down that big hill on bikes or scooters and you are guaranteed to bump into someone you know. And the Tricycle Theatre is good for getting children used to watching live performances.

What do you like most about living in Brent?
Brent has such a diversity of people with different experiences and background. I love the fact that my eldest son is one of only four white boys in his class. There’s such a mix of people in Brent and that can only be a good thing.

the last for now...

Green Wing star Tamsin Greig is tackling Shakespearean tragedy. By Jasper Rees

There was a fleeting moment, in the final episode of Channel 4's hospital comedy Green Wing, when all the hyperactive stylistic trickery fell away and one of the characters said something that seemed to come from another script altogether.


Greig gives a definitive performance as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing
Dr Caroline Todd had already had two proposals in one day and thought she was receiving a third from Mac, the handsome, commitment-phobic doctor she really wanted to marry (played by lion-maned Julian Rhind-Tutt), only for him to pretend he wasn't actually offering after all.

"You can be very cruel," she told him, and suddenly, in the midst of the surreal monkey business, the viewer had an open view of a vast well of pain and loneliness. The line stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Then I think I may well have done it wrong," says Tamsin Greig, sounding alarmed.

Hardly. It was at that moment that the RSC looked very shrewd to have invited Greig to Stratford. In a scintillating Much Ado About Nothing, she is currently giving a definitive performance as Beatrice, deploying a gift for comic timing that will also be familiar to Channel 4 viewers from Black Books.

In the gulling scene, for example, where Beatrice is tricked into overhearing news of Benedick's love for her, she gives a quite brilliant exhibition of physical comedy.

"We did push it," she says, "and I did keep stopping it and saying, 'Are we going too far here?' But she thinks she can't be seen and suddenly you see the clumsiness of her soul, of someone who can fall over when she hears that the man whom she longs for does love her."

But when the time comes to challenge Benedick to kill Claudio, undoubtedly the least funny thing ever said by a heroine in a Shakespearean comedy, she also gives the character a piercing emotional depth.

It bodes well for the less expected of her two summer bookings. In King John, which opens next week, she will put on a sad face to play Constance who eventually dies of grief after her son is denied the throne, kidnapped and killed.


It was much easier to say yes to Much Ado. "I was excited about what I knew and what I didn't know - the divide between what you've perceived already in productions and the life you could draw from it if you got your hands on it."

And King John? "People want to see you be stretched. People want to know if you can do anything else." I would argue that they don't, I tell her. People want faces off the telly to do the same thing ad infinitum. "Do you know what it is?" she says. "People want to see if you can't do it."

Greig has in fact done serious theatre before, but that was 10 years ago, before motherhood and television, with its more parent-friendly working hours, intervened.

Back then, no one knew who she was, apart from fans of The Archers. Now 39, she has been playing Debbie Aldridge (formerly Gerrard, née Travers-Macy) for 16 years, and still crops up "when the schedule allows. They have no reason to be that amenable, but they have created a job where she can be in Hungary most of the time and then come back."

But if her voice was familiar to many, no one could put a face to it for years. Or not the correct one. "It's interesting to see the dislocation between how people perceive a person visually. Apparently on the radio I'm blonde with a big arse."

Back then, when she wasn't in Ambridge, theatre was all she ever did. "I'm more surprised than anyone that I didn't carry on just in that arena. I had said to my agent last year, 'Maybe I need to put my toe back in,' assuming that she understood that I meant some lunchtime pub theatre in Islington."

Greig is exactly as you'd expect. She's funny, the interesting end of normal, baffled by her success and pre-programmed to deflect compliments.

Take, for example, the revelation of how wonderfully sexy her Beatrice is. The role is a far cry from the terminally single girl she played last year in Love Soup, David Renwick's BBC romantic comedy series, or her love-lorn surgical registrar in Green Wing. But she attributes all of her sexiness in Much Ado to the 1950s Cuban setting.

"The designer's pictures were of Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and that's where you get the hair curled and the pointy breasts. None of it's me. It's great to be something that you completely aren't. To be somebody who does go, 'Check it out, come on, but you can't touch it.'

"I just think you have to find the heart of somebody. If you don't find it, then there's not much point in opening your mouth."

As a child she was a remorseless show-off, inheriting a taste for slapstick from a father who was already in his sixties when his middle child was born. "My dad used to laugh himself out of his own beard when he saw people falling over, and my husband [the actor Richard Leaf] swears that that's the only thing that makes me laugh."

She got her first laugh onstage as a teenager in, of all plays, The Crucible. "There aren't many laughs in that and I remember doing a look and everybody laughed and I just thought, wow, that's incredible how you can do that. So I did another look and they laughed again and then I remember thinking, hold on, this isn't right for this piece, you've got to stop it."

On her father's advice, she read drama at Birmingham: "University ticked a better box for him than drama school." On her mother's advice, she went on to secretarial college: "I can still type really fast." Her last temping job coincided with her last theatre job, 10 years before she joined the RSC.

The suspicion lurks that Greig is a great comedian who in King John will be temping as a tragedian. I ask her if she signed up for a history play to prove that she could do more than… but she finishes the question for me. "Fall over? I am trying to get a fall in, don't worry."

'King John' opens at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (0870 609 1110), on Thursday

she didn't fall over properly, but there was a bit in one of her long speeches when she sort of stumbled and tripped with shock, then re-gained her balance! i perked up straight away, bolting upright so quickly i scared my mum lol!

thanx for the interviews, however, since i am such a great fan of anything, i had read the outer two...

meant to say anything green wing!! kinda spoilt the aloofness i was going for

quote:

If anyone can get tickets to see MAAN then I highly reccommend it it was out of this world....and its along time since I studied Shakespeare but I now I know why I enjoyed reading his plays so much they rock!

My tickets for London arrived this morning:-))) Excited!