Lloyd Evans talks to the warm, vibrant, vegetable-growing actor, teacher and director Caroline Quentin
Terminal fear. Rising nausea. And possibly vomiting. That’s what Caroline Quentin expects to go through on the opening night of her new play, Terrible Advice, at the Menier Chocolate Factory. ‘I’m really pretending it’s not happening at the moment,’ she tells me when we meet in the theatre bar. With two weeks to go before the first performance, she confesses, ‘I get dry-mouth at the very bloody thought of it. Mind you, I’m always like this halfway through rehearsals, I think, agh! I can’t bear it, perhaps I can run away. Or feign injury. Or I start booking flights mentally and all that.’
Does she dream that the theatre has burnt down? ‘Oh, yeah, I do all that.’ And imagine burning it down herself? ‘Imagine it? No, I actually plan it.’
In person, she’s warm, vibrant, fast-talking and apt to burst into fits of laughter. Clearly she’s easy company, a good mixer, and not given to introspection or anxiety. It’s impossible to imagine her saying anything airy-fairy or pretentious. The production, a world première, is constantly being rewritten and she has to cope with pages of new dialogue to be mastered overnight. ‘I usually use my 12-year-old, Emily, like a slave, to help me learn my lines,’ she admits, ‘but she’s too young to read this. There’s a lot of swearing, and it’s quite sexually explicit. And I’m hoping people won’t come expecting a sitcom. It’s a very dark piece about two girls and two guys who are best friends. And they’re couples, too. They’re really quite damaged people. It’s about how we lie to ourselves, and deceive each other, and what we settle for, and how we convince ourselves that what we’re settling for is a choice. It’s a brutally honest piece of work.’
The writer, Saul Rubinek, is a film actor best known for his role in True Romance in which he played a movie mogul who buys a suitcase of cocaine from Christian Slater’s character. He attends rehearsals every day and works closely with the American director, Frank Oz. Quentin relishes their ‘volatile’ approach to rehearsals. Volatile? Is that a euphemism?
‘No, it’s really exciting. If someone doesn’t like something they’ll come straight out with it. There’s none of this weaving and manipulating you sometimes get. Saul will say’ (she slips into an aggressive, New York drawl), ‘“I doan like that, Frank! I doan like it!” And Frank goes, “Hear me out, Saul. Just hear me out!” And there am I thinking, “Oh, but we’re British! Don’t shout at each other. We’re scared!”’
An actor of Quentin’s calibre is free to pick and choose between drama projects. But she had to audition for this role. ‘I haven’t done that for quite a long time. And it was REALLLY frightening. I came along, I read. I thought I hadn’t got it, I threw my script away. Next morning, there’s a phone call, “Got it.” So I scrabbled through the bin-bags to find the script. It’s really exciting for me.’
Her career choices are deliberately ‘more eclectic’ these days. The prospect of ‘four months filming a TV drama in Manchester’ holds very little appeal now that her two children are growing up. And when the eight-week run of the play comes to an end she’ll return to work presenting the BBC heritage show Restoration Home. ‘I’m the layman of the team, that’s my role. But I have a real interest in it, too. I’ve done up about ten houses in the last eight years. A couple of them were Grade II listed.’
So has she been able to expand into progressively larger homes herself? ‘Well, I’ve lived in one very big house, but [a conspiratorial whisper] I didn’t like it. So we’ve moved to a really much smaller place, a converted farmhouse. A massive home isn’t ideal if you like seeing your family. They’re always four flights up, down a corridor.’
Her latest home, near Tiverton, has an ample kitchen garden. She not only grows her own vegetables but also carts them up to London for distribution among the cast. Her bag is bulging with plump red tomatoes, freshly dug up carrots and little beetroots glazed with the grey-pink Devon soil. She brims with enthusiasm for rural life and recommends it as an antidote to the spiritual poverty of the inner city.
‘The countryside teaches you everything. It gives you peace of mind. You’re not surrounded by trash, by handbags, by greed, by drug culture and all that. It stops you thinking that the only thing that’s worth anything comes from a shop.’ She sketches out an urban enlightenment programme that has a touch of the Willie Whitelaws about it. ‘Get a bloody great coach,’ she says, ‘take some children out. And put them in a kinder environment where they have to take part.’
She hasn’t yet settled on her next theatrical project. She’s toying with a possible return to musicals where she began her career. She devotes a lot of time to teaching young students at the Actors Centre. And she’s considering adding to her directing credits. ‘Terry Johnson asked me to direct his play Dead Funny, and I did. And it was really, really good. And I’ve done a bit of directing with students, too. It’s something I could be quite good at, I think, if I really applied myself. I get a huge buzz out of working with other actors.’
‘Do you mind the director’s burden, being the babysitter to the company?’
‘Well, I’m not massively kind like that. As my students will tell you. One 17-year-old said to me [whiney voice], “I don’t think my character would do that.” And I said, “Just do it the way I told you.” And he said [even whinier voice], “I don’t think my character would…” I said, ‘I’m not interested in what you think. I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. So just trust me. Trust my judgment. And do it!’
‘You sound like Harold Pinter.’
‘Well, I can be, yeah. I’m a fascist fucking dictator of a director. And there’s something to be said for that. Directors need to be a bit fierce.’
‘OK, that’s good,’ I tell her, winding up the interview. ‘I think I have everything I need.’
‘Thought so, yeah,’ she says. ‘You’ve got a great headline. I’m a fascist dictator.’
Terrible Advice is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 until 12 November.
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