As she prepares to return to the London stage in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, Imelda Staunton tells Matthew Amer about exploring darker roles, working with Mike Leigh and hosting the Olivier Awards.
There is something delightfully macabre about Imelda Staunton as, sitting on the other end of a phone line, she tells me “damaged goods; that’s what I like”. There is an almost vampiric relish in her voice as she describes the joy she gets from delving into dark places to play these challenging women.
Think back over the roles the leading British actress has played in the last couple of years: Dolores Umbridge, the ambitious, masochistic temporary headmistress of Hogwarts in two Harry Potter films; Miss Octavia Pole, the interfering busybody of Cranford; Little Miss Bossy in the Mr Men Movie (okay, maybe not Little Miss Bossy). While the world finds these characters irritating at best, Staunton may well let off a party popper every time one is brought to her. “You want some complication,” she explains with glee. “You want to be able to figure it out and you want to not be able to do it, to try and get it right and to try and alter your perception of it. I like things that are complicated, they’re much more interesting than playing the “Morning Jean, would you like a cup of tea” woman. It’s much more interesting to play someone who’s damaged.”
This is why she is returning to the London stage in the Almeida theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Written five years after his best known play, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, it follows a couple of urban socialites whose lives of drinks parties and social clubs are disrupted by the return of their recently-divorced daughter, the impromptu arrival of friends and the presence of the wife’s alcoholic sister, played by Staunton.
“They are people whose lives are unlived and they are coming to realise that,” she says of Albee’s characters. “It’s funny, you talk about these people with dark centres and unhappiness and lack of fulfilment, but because it’s 1966 and they’re very well off, part of you thinks ‘who cares?’ But actually, if you’re on a housing estate, if you’re living in a tribe in Africa, or if you’re in a mansion, you can still have discontent.”
“It’s much more interesting to play someone who’s damaged”
While Staunton speaks the truth, it is also true that it is much harder to feel for martini-quaffing party-going socialites than sooty-faced impoverished street urchins. “It is hard to have sympathy for those people,” Staunton agrees, “so I think it is absolutely our job to figure out what has happened to these people and why they are so ineffectual that they cannot change their lives.”
The role of the complicated drunkard sister for whom every syllable of speech “is said from a very, very dark place” was one reason Staunton wanted to appear in A Delicate Balance. The other was co-star Penelope Wilton. “If I just went across the back of the stage reading the telephone directory I’d do it to work with her,” Staunton enthuses.
It took me by surprise to hear that the two leading lights of British acting had not previously worked together. I was sure they must have both been in the cast of the BBC’s cracking costume drama Cranford, which collected together a host of Britain’s finest performers for two bonnet-tastic series. Alas, in reality Wilton was the only thing missing from the award-winning drama.
“That did feel like a job where every element was right,” Staunton says, happily confirming what the show’s millions of viewers would have suspected. “The script, the directors, the producers, the costumes; every bit of it was right. That doesn’t happen very often; you always have to make concessions.”
In addition to its quality, the period drama, which also starred her husband Jim Carter and daughter Bessie, was notable for the number of more experienced actresses on its cast list. Staunton was joined by Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Deborah Findley, Francesca Annis and Lesley Manville; this at a time when much was being said and written about a lack of opportunities for actresses older than 40.
“If I just went across the back of the stage reading the telephone directory I’d do it to work with [Penelope Wilton]”
Maybe it is just that Staunton’s talent stands her head and shoulders above many other performers, but she has not experienced this problem at all. “Maybe it’s just a handful of women playing those parts,” she suggests.
Indeed, following her run in A Delicate Balance she will have a couple of months away from the stage before heading to Chichester to star opposite performer, presenter and now producer Michael Ball in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
As with the prospect of teaming Staunton with Wilton at the Almeida, the thought of Ball and Staunton playing the demon barber and his pie-making partner has my mouth watering more than one of Mrs Lovett’s own meaty offerings. Staunton, though, is taking nothing for granted regarding the show’s success. “I don’t think there’s a guarantee. It’s head down and try and make it as real as we can.”
If the pair’s pre-Sweeney try-out hosting the relaunched Olivier Awards with MasterCard is anything to go by, Ball and Staunton have a natural chemistry already.
There can’t be many gigs more prone to making even those with nerves of steel shake with fear than taking to the stage in front of an audience of your peers and presenting an awards ceremony that is being televised live for the first time following a marketing push the likes of which had never before been seen. You could barely move in London without seeing adverts for the ceremony on bus-sides and billboards, in tube stations and newspapers. “It was a nerve-wracking fortnight [leading up to the Olivier Awards],” Staunton admits. “I thought ‘Why have I put myself through this?’ But on the day I absolutely loved it. It was a real thrill and a real honour.” Now, with the ceremony under her belt, she makes the art of presenting sound incredibly easy: “You just serve it up: You get on, maybe a little bit of a joke, and you get off with a bit of dignity.” The 2012 presenters should take note.
“With Mike Leigh you use every single bit of yourself”
Staunton, of course, knows her way around awards ceremonies. She has twice won an Olivier Award – in 1991 for Into The Woods and in 1985 for A Chorus Of Disapproval and The Corn Is Green – while the 2004/5 awards season saw her nominated at almost every major movie awards ceremony, including the Oscars, for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake.
When I ask her about working with Leigh, who famously uses a long period of improvisational work to create his characters and plots, her answer is definite and heartfelt: “It is the best. There’s no doubt about it. That’s it for me. That’s the best way of working ever. If he asks you, you do it, because it’s the most fulfilling and in-depth process there is. To have had that in my career is just amazing. You and Mike create the character. That’s it. The two of you. You’re writing it. You’re creating it. You’re deciding what that person is, how they feel. It takes months and months and months to do, but it never feels indulgent. It’s absolutely extraordinary and very hard to describe. With Mike Leigh you use every single bit of yourself… and you don’t in most other jobs.”
You would think it might be difficult to pick highlights from Staunton’s eclectic career. Apparently not. Joining Vera Drake at the top of the Staunton chart is her performance as Piaf in Nottingham – “the first time I’d combined singing with a very emotional acting role” – and Guys And Dolls, which was “the greatest show, and I got a husband out of it”.
Staunton’s daughter Bessie is now following in the footsteps of both parents, acting with the National Youth Theatre and trying out roles behind the scenes as well as on stage and in front of the camera. While many performers would rather their children aimed at a more solid, dependable career, Staunton is delighted her daughter is giving entertainment a go. “If I was a doctor,” she says, “no-one would say ‘Put her off being a doctor’. It might have been the case 40 years ago [that acting was an unreliable profession], but there are no jobs that are reliable any more.”
There are no reliable jobs unless, I might suggest, you are Imelda Staunton. Then you can be pretty sure that whether it be playing a character that aspires to being Bond’s M but falls sadly short in the upcoming series of black comedy Psychoville, voicing Mrs Christmas in a new Aardman film, or exploring the depths of another damaged soul, there will always be a job offer around the corner.
MA