Out of this world | 10 September 2011

Lloyd Evans meets Tara FitzGerald and is struck by her uncanny beauty and her desire to hear what he thinks

Tara FitzGerald’s beauty is fabulous. Literally, there’s something unworldly about the surfaces and contours of her face. It’s as if the codes of her biology had been transmitted to earth from a higher realm, from alien beings. The wide cheekbones are angular yet softly curvaceous. Her eyes have a luminous purity, a revelatory greenness. Her dark hair glows, and her immaculate skin is invitation-card white. She speaks in a low, smokily textured voice that occasionally surges into a throaty giggle.

I meet her at the Tricycle theatre in Kilburn where she’s currently starring alongside Antony Sher in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass. The production is due to transfer to the Vaudeville on 14 September.

We climb a staircase and emerge on to the roof and sit at a table in the late August sunshine. Recent events have given the play an unexpected topicality. ‘Did you watch the riots on TV?’ I ask. ‘I didn’t need to,’ she says. ‘We were barricaded inside the theatre doing technical rehearsals. Things had got quite funky down on Kilburn High Road so they had to evacuate the cinema which is part of this building. We finished rehearsals early and they got us cars to take us home. It was strange because my character says, “They’re smashing windows and beating children.” So it suddenly seemed quite topical. Obviously it wasn’t as bad as Kristallnacht but there was a lot of broken glass.’

The play, written in 1994, examines the rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany from the perspective of New Yorkers responding to reports of attacks on Jews and the infamous pogrom of 9 November 1938. FitzGerald’s character, Sylvia, reacts by succumbing to a psychosomatic disorder which deprives her of the use of her legs.