INTERVIEW
Nichola McAuliffe
appearing in
Great Expectations
Palace Theatre, Westcliff on Sea
19th - 24th March 2018
Nichola McAuliffe
appearing in
Great Expectations
Palace Theatre, Westcliff on Sea
19th - 24th March 2018
Most people with be familiar with Nichola McAuliffe as the acerbic Sheila Sabatini in the ITV television series, Surgical Spirit. It’s only after I finish chatting to Nichola on the phone that I realise I didn’t ask her anything about it. It doesn't really matter because, you see, Nichola has achieved so much in her acting, writing and directing career, we could have talked for hours and still not touched on everything she's accomplished.
For starters, Nichola has won the Olivier award for Kate in the RSC’s production of Kiss Me Kate and is the only person to win the Edinburgh Stage Best Actress Award twice for Alan Bennett’s Bed Among the Lentils and in her own play, Maurice’s Jubilee. With novels and playwriting credits also under her belt, as well as numerous television appearances, her talent and enthusiasm for work seems to know no bounds; in fact when I imply that she doesn’t seem to have ever stopped working, she jokes, “I think I had a fortnight off in 1977!” She is also the voice of James Bond's BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies. Bet you didn't know that?
It’s quickly evident that Nichola has a fabulous sense of humour and our conversation is peppered with lots of wicked chuckles. She is currently touring the country playing the iconic role of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations and, to kick off, I ask what attracted her to the role.
“Well, firstly it’s being produced by a wonderful new production company, Tilted Wig and secondly, one of the great names of British theatre, Nick Lloyd, who runs the Malvern Theatre and who’s a very old friend, phoned me up and said, ‘Nichola, I don’t suppose you want to do this but… would you like to play Miss Havisham in Great Expectations?’ And I said, ‘Darling, it’s a sitting down part with a practical cake in the third act, what’s not to like?!’”
Another of the reasons for taking on the role at the time was that Nichola could work until the tour ends in June in order to take time off to be with her husband, Don MacKay. Very sadly, Don, a highly revered Fleet Street journalist, died last November from complications following a rare type of blood cancer. However, Nichola made the brave decision to carry on working.
“I know Don would have said, ‘You gotta do the job,’ and he's here on tour with me. The best thing in the world is to be working, especially in our business.” She continues, “It’s quite ironic, because when my father died I was doing The Heiress which is about a father/daughter relationship and of course, with my husband dying, I’m spending all night in a wedding dress. So channel it, that’s what I say, channel it. I’m very glad and very happy to be doing it.”
For starters, Nichola has won the Olivier award for Kate in the RSC’s production of Kiss Me Kate and is the only person to win the Edinburgh Stage Best Actress Award twice for Alan Bennett’s Bed Among the Lentils and in her own play, Maurice’s Jubilee. With novels and playwriting credits also under her belt, as well as numerous television appearances, her talent and enthusiasm for work seems to know no bounds; in fact when I imply that she doesn’t seem to have ever stopped working, she jokes, “I think I had a fortnight off in 1977!” She is also the voice of James Bond's BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies. Bet you didn't know that?
It’s quickly evident that Nichola has a fabulous sense of humour and our conversation is peppered with lots of wicked chuckles. She is currently touring the country playing the iconic role of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations and, to kick off, I ask what attracted her to the role.
“Well, firstly it’s being produced by a wonderful new production company, Tilted Wig and secondly, one of the great names of British theatre, Nick Lloyd, who runs the Malvern Theatre and who’s a very old friend, phoned me up and said, ‘Nichola, I don’t suppose you want to do this but… would you like to play Miss Havisham in Great Expectations?’ And I said, ‘Darling, it’s a sitting down part with a practical cake in the third act, what’s not to like?!’”
Another of the reasons for taking on the role at the time was that Nichola could work until the tour ends in June in order to take time off to be with her husband, Don MacKay. Very sadly, Don, a highly revered Fleet Street journalist, died last November from complications following a rare type of blood cancer. However, Nichola made the brave decision to carry on working.
“I know Don would have said, ‘You gotta do the job,’ and he's here on tour with me. The best thing in the world is to be working, especially in our business.” She continues, “It’s quite ironic, because when my father died I was doing The Heiress which is about a father/daughter relationship and of course, with my husband dying, I’m spending all night in a wedding dress. So channel it, that’s what I say, channel it. I’m very glad and very happy to be doing it.”
Nichola clearly feels quite passionate about touring and getting away from the West End scene.
“I think we’ve got a bit celebrity obsessed and London-centric,” she explains. “You’ve got people in subsidised theatre particularly saying, nobody decent will tour - I won’t name names - and you go, hang on a minute, I’m not chopped liver. I’m very proud to go out of London because I think it’s incredibly important; and also why would London be more important than Southend or Malvern or any of the other places we’re playing.”
“The West End is utterly celebrity obsessed. You look at the London scene and it is wall to wall musicals with a couple of transfers from the big subsidised houses, the National and the RSC and then you’ve got anomalies like The Play That Goes Wrong which is terrific. Time and time again you’re told you can’t put any plays on because it hasn’t got any ‘names’ in it and nobody will book it and you’re like, ‘Hang on a minute, what are you talking about?’ She jokingly responds, “In the words of Shakespeare, “Piss off!'”
Not sure I remember that quote Nichola? “Yeah, it’s Henry 26th Part 14!” she retorts, quick as a flash.
Nichola’s humour is brought very much to the fore with her second novel entitled, A Fanny Full of Soap- the Story of a West End Disaster, which she tells me is a true story.
“I had to write it as a novel because it was so ridiculous and nobody would have believed it. I mean it really is a West End disaster par excellence. We opened on the Friday, the producers did a runner on the Tuesday and we closed the following Saturday. Everything is true. It was called Murderous Instincts. It was a vanity job - the producer was married to the writer and he put it on for her. He said he was an American Broadway Producer. Well, the only thing he’d produced since 1948 was hot air basically!” More laughter.
I love the sound of Nichola’s latest play, which she is hoping to get produced next year, called Legs, Bums and Bingo Wings to which she chuckles, “I thought that would bring the girls in.”
“I think we’ve got a bit celebrity obsessed and London-centric,” she explains. “You’ve got people in subsidised theatre particularly saying, nobody decent will tour - I won’t name names - and you go, hang on a minute, I’m not chopped liver. I’m very proud to go out of London because I think it’s incredibly important; and also why would London be more important than Southend or Malvern or any of the other places we’re playing.”
“The West End is utterly celebrity obsessed. You look at the London scene and it is wall to wall musicals with a couple of transfers from the big subsidised houses, the National and the RSC and then you’ve got anomalies like The Play That Goes Wrong which is terrific. Time and time again you’re told you can’t put any plays on because it hasn’t got any ‘names’ in it and nobody will book it and you’re like, ‘Hang on a minute, what are you talking about?’ She jokingly responds, “In the words of Shakespeare, “Piss off!'”
Not sure I remember that quote Nichola? “Yeah, it’s Henry 26th Part 14!” she retorts, quick as a flash.
Nichola’s humour is brought very much to the fore with her second novel entitled, A Fanny Full of Soap- the Story of a West End Disaster, which she tells me is a true story.
“I had to write it as a novel because it was so ridiculous and nobody would have believed it. I mean it really is a West End disaster par excellence. We opened on the Friday, the producers did a runner on the Tuesday and we closed the following Saturday. Everything is true. It was called Murderous Instincts. It was a vanity job - the producer was married to the writer and he put it on for her. He said he was an American Broadway Producer. Well, the only thing he’d produced since 1948 was hot air basically!” More laughter.
I love the sound of Nichola’s latest play, which she is hoping to get produced next year, called Legs, Bums and Bingo Wings to which she chuckles, “I thought that would bring the girls in.”
Nichola with Séan Aydon (Pip) and Isla Carter (Estella) - Lisa Roberts Photography
One thing which does frustrate Nichola is having to work with inexperienced, or as she says, ‘stupid’ directors and she clearly doesn’t suffer fools.
“I did a production with a well known actor who was listening to the director. The director was not only stupid but he was ignorant and arrogant with it and hadn’t done his homework. He was leading this actor right up the garden path. It wasn’t until it was really too late that the actor turned around to others of us in the cast and said, ‘What do you think?’ But it’s very difficult - you can’t interfere because otherwise it becomes a war zone, frankly.”
“I had an actor who had the word ‘chimera’ in something he had to say, which I had written, and he argued with me every single day that there was no such word. Chimera means something that doesn’t exist a sort of a mythical monster. You could say that the chimera in your life is the fear or something or another, you know, it haunts you. And because he didn’t know the word, every day he battled over that line.”
I suggest that surely he could have just looked it up in the dictionary.
“No” Nichola replies adamantly, and not without a hint of sarcasm, “Quite often if you’re working with male heterosexual actors that’s far too easy. It’s like asking them to ask directions or look at the map,” she says wryly. “He knew better because he was a bloke. In other circumstances I would have changed the word but because he was so bloody stupid, I didn’t.”
Thankfully, Great Expectations has a wonderful director in Sophie Boyce Couzens and Nichola is full of praise, telling me, “She’s lovely, she really is and very open to ideas.”
“This production is incredibly technical because all of the people on stage, except Sean Aydon who plays Pip and me, play other parts as well. They’re climbing up and down the set and running about - it’s incredibly physical plus they’re also making sound effects. It’s a very physical show. If anybody saw the National Theatre’s Jane Eyre, there’s some similarities and also to Trevor Nunn’s Nicholas Nickleby all those year’s ago, where everybody is sort of there and on stage all the time.”
“I did a production with a well known actor who was listening to the director. The director was not only stupid but he was ignorant and arrogant with it and hadn’t done his homework. He was leading this actor right up the garden path. It wasn’t until it was really too late that the actor turned around to others of us in the cast and said, ‘What do you think?’ But it’s very difficult - you can’t interfere because otherwise it becomes a war zone, frankly.”
“I had an actor who had the word ‘chimera’ in something he had to say, which I had written, and he argued with me every single day that there was no such word. Chimera means something that doesn’t exist a sort of a mythical monster. You could say that the chimera in your life is the fear or something or another, you know, it haunts you. And because he didn’t know the word, every day he battled over that line.”
I suggest that surely he could have just looked it up in the dictionary.
“No” Nichola replies adamantly, and not without a hint of sarcasm, “Quite often if you’re working with male heterosexual actors that’s far too easy. It’s like asking them to ask directions or look at the map,” she says wryly. “He knew better because he was a bloke. In other circumstances I would have changed the word but because he was so bloody stupid, I didn’t.”
Thankfully, Great Expectations has a wonderful director in Sophie Boyce Couzens and Nichola is full of praise, telling me, “She’s lovely, she really is and very open to ideas.”
“This production is incredibly technical because all of the people on stage, except Sean Aydon who plays Pip and me, play other parts as well. They’re climbing up and down the set and running about - it’s incredibly physical plus they’re also making sound effects. It’s a very physical show. If anybody saw the National Theatre’s Jane Eyre, there’s some similarities and also to Trevor Nunn’s Nicholas Nickleby all those year’s ago, where everybody is sort of there and on stage all the time.”
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When Nichola does find the time to relax, she loves nothing more than catching up with an episode of The Sopranos or Game of Thrones.
“I’ll be in my dressing room watching Sopranos or Game of Thrones,” laughs Nichola, explaining she is off stage for about an hour in the middle of the play. She loves watching films and prefers American tv to British tv, has a keen interest in forensic science and pathology and tends to gravitate towards non-fiction novels, currently reading Fire and Fury written by Michael Wolff about Donald Trump and Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey. She also loves to walk a lot. Nichola is very much looking forward to coming to Southend and the Palace Theatre, not least because she’s a great chum of former Southender, Russell Kane, who she says always champions Essex and ‘Sarfend’. One thing she’ll be up to while she’s here is rummaging through the charity shops for bargains. “I shall be round your charity shops like a hoover. I’ve picked up some cracking stuff here in Bury St Edmunds.” She reels off a whole list of exciting finds; a piece of glass art which she says is a belter of a find, a decorative bird cage, two ceramic candle sticks, a kitchen clock with a timer on it. “Oh yeah - I’ve gone mad here! My house is known as the junk shop. I’d say to Don, ‘Oh come on we’ve got to sell some of this stuff,’ and he’d say, “No we can’t sell it.’” |
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Nichola and Don were together for thirty one years and married for twenty one. With their wedding anniversary approaching on the 25th March, I ask whether she will do anything that day.
Nichola becomes quiet for a moment before replying, “I’ll probably cry a lot. I’ll sit with his ashes - which is what I’m doing at the moment.”
Oh…..when she said Don was with her on the tour I didn’t think he was actually with her.
“Ooh yes,” she exclaims, brightening up again, “He actually comes to bed with me; and he sits in the car with his seat belt on.”
How wonderful! In fact, her advice for anyone who has recently lost a partner is to keep the ashes.
“I would say definitely keep the ashes with you because every time I pass a graveyard and I think of him in the cold ground, that upsets me far more than the fact I’ve got him here.”
Ending our conversation, this time with a genuine Shakespeare quote, Nichola says, “Shakespeare said, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”
“Don is a bit more quieter and a lot more tidy now but my love for him hasn’t changed just because he’s in a tube sitting on my lap.”
To see Nichola in Great Expectations at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff you can go online to www.southendtheatres.org.uk or call the box office on 01702 351135
Nichola becomes quiet for a moment before replying, “I’ll probably cry a lot. I’ll sit with his ashes - which is what I’m doing at the moment.”
Oh…..when she said Don was with her on the tour I didn’t think he was actually with her.
“Ooh yes,” she exclaims, brightening up again, “He actually comes to bed with me; and he sits in the car with his seat belt on.”
How wonderful! In fact, her advice for anyone who has recently lost a partner is to keep the ashes.
“I would say definitely keep the ashes with you because every time I pass a graveyard and I think of him in the cold ground, that upsets me far more than the fact I’ve got him here.”
Ending our conversation, this time with a genuine Shakespeare quote, Nichola says, “Shakespeare said, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”
“Don is a bit more quieter and a lot more tidy now but my love for him hasn’t changed just because he’s in a tube sitting on my lap.”
To see Nichola in Great Expectations at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff you can go online to www.southendtheatres.org.uk or call the box office on 01702 351135