Imogen Stubbs is exhausted. The famous actress, best known for leads in films such as Jack & Sarah and Sense and Sensibility, is playing a mother of four in new drama Things I Know To Be True.
But it’s not her children which have worn her out but the sheer physicality of the play; part movement, part acting.
“It’s been like doing a circuits class every day,” she laughs, "but I like doing things in the theatre I haven’t attempted before and Frantic Assembly is so innovative, it’s almost more a dance show.
So is she enjoying it? “I must admit I haven’t worked this hard on stage for a long time. And yet it’s such a good way of getting theatre across and enjoying yourself at the same time, becauseThings I Know To Be True is really funny as well so it’s a really great production.
Imogen first appeared on stage at the Oxford Playhouse in Chekhov’s Three Sisters’ whilst a student at Exeter, and despite getting a first in English, went straight off to RADA instead.
“I came from a theatrical family and I didn’t want to go on being academic but wanted to go to drama school. I wouldn’t have known what to do with an English degree anyway so I auditioned for RADA and went there instead. But it wasn’t an overwhelming passion, not something I’d wanted to do since I was little.”
And the reality of acting? “Thrilling but brutal, so I have mixed feelings about the profession as a whole. But at least when we started out people couldn’t care less what you looked like and there wasn’t any of this awful public scrutiny. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
“And at my age (55) I don’t get the blonde-haired blue eyed parts any more so it’s great to have something you can sink your teeth into. It’s much more of a challenge.”
Playing the mother of four grown-up children, “not so different” from her own set up of three step children and two grown-up children, she says any further comparisons (she was married to Sir Trevor Nunn earning herself the title Lady Nunn) are futile: “It’s nothing like my life, nothing like me. But it is nice to return to Oxford as an actress especially in something as wonderful as Things I Know To Be True."
The play depicts a grown family dealing with their parents divorce, combining physical theatre and drama in a ground-breaking way.
“Every section is a form of crisis and the dance only heightens that. But the story-line is about what lasts and what doesn’t. So all of us have had to be real team players, and it’s been such fun doing it together.”
THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE
Tuesday 4 to Saturday 8 October
Oxford Playhouse
www.oxfordplayhouse.com
01865 305305
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