Within two minutes of our interview starting, Imogen Stubbs, one of the leading actors of British theatre, is begging forgiveness. It seems, according to her, that she has committed some great sin against the people of Suffolk.
I'm a little nonplussed, but she explains. In 1982, while a final year student at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) she was cast by Dick Tuckey, then artistic director at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, in two plays. The first was as Sally Bowles in Cabaret – a part made famous by a young Judi Dench on the West End stage and by Liza Minelli in the Oscar-winning film. It was Imogen’s professional debut and all went well.
“I loved playing Sally Bowles. Dick (Tuckey) was so lovely and supportive. He provided so many opportunities to young actors that I am genuinely surprised he has not been knighted. He did so much for local theatre and for the profession as a whole. There was a great feeling of belonging at the Wolsey. We all had a great time and it was wonderful to be a part of a successful, very ambitious show.”
Clearly, Cabaret doesn’t require an apology. It’s her second show at the Wolsey that haunts her – The Boyfriend. “I think Cabaret was such a success that they cast me in The Boyfriend and I was awful. I went on each night knowing that I was bad, and it’s the worst feeling in the world.
“I was execrable in The Boyfriend and I can only apologise to everyone who saw it. I’m glad to say that I learnt my lesson and have never done another musical since. Cabaret worked because Sally Bowles was not supposed to be very good, but as we all discovered in The Boyfriend, I am not a trained soprano, which is what was needed. Nor am I a tap dancer and there were these huge tap numbers.
"The rest of the production was fine, but I was terrible. In the end I started to sound like Maurice Chevalier and half-talked the songs. I suppose it was a good lesson to learn early on in my career because it taught me humility, and I felt so sorry for the people I was playing opposite.”
Now Imogen is returning to the Suffolk stage to perform in the award-winning play The Children at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, which will be directed by artistic director Owen Calvert-Lyons. Written by Lucy Kirkwood, the play premiered at The Royal Court in November 2016 before being transferred to Broadway in 2017, where it was nominated for a Tony award. The Guardian newspaper, in a review of modern theatre, declared it to be one of the top three plays of the 21st century.
For Imogen the play will be a journey of discovery as it’s a work she knows by reputation but has never seen. “I am very much looking forward to it. It’s got a lot to sink your teeth into, a lot to think about.” She plays Rose, a retired nuclear scientist who challenges old friends, Hazel and Robin, to consider what impact their past actions will have on the world. Inspired by Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, Lucy Kirkwood is able to talk about big issues and raise difficult questions because she anchors the debate in the lives of life-like, three-dimensional characters.
“As an acting challenge it’s a real treat,” Imogen enthuses. “It’s a play about social responsibility and whether having children sharpens, or diminishes that. The other thing I am looking forward to is acting in a play when the cast is all my own age. I’ve been in a lot of things recently where the various cast members have been delightful, but have been so young. It’s nice to be able to play opposite people my own age (she's 61). You wouldn’t know how rare that is and what a treat.
“Also, these days I am in the incredibly privileged position to decide if I want to do something or not, so what tempts me now is having the opportunity to work on plays with wonderful scripts by great writers and to perform in wonderful theatres like the Theatre Royal.”
Director, Owen Calvert-Lyons is delighted that Imogen has agreed to join the cast and believes that audiences are in for a treat. “Imogen is one of our country’s most celebrated actors and is perfect for the part. The Children is a powerful play and it needs great actors to play these parts. We are a relatively small theatre so our audiences are in for a real treat, getting to witness powerhouse performances up close.”
For Imogen she is looking forward to not only stepping onto the stage of one of the country’s oldest working theatres, but also performing at a venue that was regularly frequented by her step-father. “My step-father used to live in Bury St Edmunds and was a regular at the Theatre Royal, and he was passionate about it. He regarded it as a jewel in the town, quite rightly, and it is something to be treasured and protected.
“As you know I was married to Trevor Nunn for many years and he is proudly from Suffolk, and his predecessor at both the RSC and the National Theatre, Peter Hall, came from Bury. I always think that at various times they looked somewhat alike – it must something of a shared theatrical heritage.”
Although she has spent most of her life immersed in theatre, it quickly becomes clear during our conversation, that Imogen Stubbs is a person with wide-ranging interests. She loves travel and she loves writing, and increasingly she doesn’t like to be pigeon-holed. She likes to go out and experience the world, which, she says, makes her a better actor.
Imogen even had an unconventional start to life. Born in Northumberland, she spent much of her childhood living with her parents on a barge moored on the Thames before winning a scholarship to Oxford University where she gained a first class degree in English.
In recent years she has worked as an editor for Reader’s Digest, a short story writer and as an experienced travel journalist supplying a number of publications. Her wanderlust has taken her all over the world, crossing the mountains in Kyrgyzstan on horseback, travelling across frozen Alaska with The Iditarod, and horse surfing the sand dunes in the Atacama desert in Chile.
She has also penned a play, We Happy Few, which opened at the Gielgud Theatre in 2004. Directed by then husband Trevor Nunn, it starred Juliet Stevenson and Marcia Warren. Although, it was well received, she feels the story would work better as a novel, allowing her to make her characters more nuanced and include more detail. The play follows a group of female actors touring Shakespeare plays around the UK during World War II. The story is based on the real-life Osiris Players, the country’s first all-female theatre troupe.
This mix of acting and writing has given Imogen a rich and varied later career and is something she is urging her own children prepare for. “The world has changed so much that you can’t rely on doing just one thing.
“In some ways as parents we don’t know what we are preparing our children for, so I have always said just grab every experience you can. You do need more than one string to your bow if you are going to survive in this world.
“For me, I felt as a woman, there was a really big clock ticking because of the way you look. Thankfully, now on telly, thanks to writers like Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax) there are some great roles for older women, but when I was younger there wasn’t, so you felt you had to prepare for when the parts started drying up.
“Also, you change as a person. What excited you at 21 doesn’t always have the same appeal at 50. For example, I would find touring really hard now. I like to be anchored in one place. Also, because of my travel writing and various other things I don’t think I would want to commit to an extended run in anything anymore.
“I think what I am aiming for now, is to do the things I enjoy and get the most out of the experience. This is what I'm looking forward to with The Children. I'm looking forward to working with Owen. I don’t know him but many of my friends do, and they've been phoning me up and saying, 'Oh, well done, you’ll have a lot of fun working with him,' which is a lovely thing to hear.”
The Children, by Lucy Kirkwood, runs March 10-25 at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. theatreroyal.org
