A date with Miss January
10/02/2011
Everyone who watches TV knows Gwen Taylor. For years now she has been a staple in shows such as ‘Duty Free’, ‘Barbara’, ‘A Bit of a Do’ and, latterly, ‘Heartbeat’. But she also regularly treads the boards in plays ranging from ‘Prick up your Ears’ with Matt Lucas to the recent stage success, ‘Quartet’, where she played one of three retired and larger than life opera singers living together in a nursing home.
When we chat she is in the final rehearsals prior to a nationwide tour with the fabulous ‘Calendar Girls’, which opens at the Bristol Hippodrome
as this edition ‘hits the streets’. Nervous?
“In a state of high excitement,” she corrects me. “I’m one of three or four new ‘girls’ in the cast, but fortunately there are others, including Linda Bellingham, who have been with the tour before. “So they help us through and we can take some short cuts in rehearsals. But it’s not the lines I worry about. It’s moving furniture.” Moving furniture? “Yes I know it sounds silly but you can end up concentrating on where things have to go – and forget your lines! It’s also pretty important on this tour as the stages are so big.
We’re at 2,000 seaters, which is great because that shows just how popular the play has become.”
I venture to suggest that Calendar Girls has become something of an institution now (no pun intended) with its own heritage that people attending will want to see preserved. “That’s right. Everyone knows the film, and quite a few of our audiences will have seen the stage play two or three times as well. You just have to bring what you can to the part. And, oddly, I’ve never
seen the play – I was meant to see it in Brighton but it was during all that snow.”
We talk about how Calendar Girls continues to resonate with audiences. “You can’t help but leave the theatre smiling”, says Gwen, smiling
herself, “although there’s some pathos in there as well. It’s so wonderful to be in, and in the play the action and dialogue is condensed into a smaller cast. Having 12 Calendar Girls would have been unwieldy.”
Literally, a stripped down cast then - although everything in the play is done in the very best taste. And her part? “Oh, I’m Miss January. I play a former teacher in her 70s. She was retired before she wanted to go and finding life a bit dull. So she really enjoys the camaraderie of the project they set out on. It’s the part my friend Sian Philips played when it was in the West End.
“It’s got what they call the ‘feelgood factor’.” Can she imagine herself doing this sort of thing if she hadn’t become a famous actress?
“Absolutely. The original WI ladies are very strong characters. I was set on a career in the bank in my home county in Derbyshire before I took the plunge into acting.” Not a profession we agree, you want to mention at dinner parties. “I think it’s taken over from being an undertaker!” she laughs.
The earthy Derbyshire accent, of course, is something that has put her in good stead over the years, although I have to report that her off screen accent now is – while not quite cut crystal – in the higher echelons of received pronunciation. That said, she has stayed sufficiently close to her
roots to even have a bus in Derby named after her!
Look at the key parts that have marked her out on TV and she regularly
plays the strong, Northern type – forthright, shall we say - and no part captured that better than ‘Duty Free’, where she gave her ever-wayward husband – played by Keith Barron - a deservedly hard time. “If I had to say which was my favourite work it would be that,” she says, “simply because it gave me my big break.” Ironically, however, she never left England in its
entire run. “It was all shot in front of an audience – and the one time the cast and crew went off to Spain, I couldn’t go and I had to shoot my scene in a film set in Shepperton!”
One of the parts that made her name in the profession was totally out of kilter with her big TV roles: she worked extensively with the Monty
Python crew – in ‘Life of Brian’, ‘The Rutles’ and ‘Ripping Yarns’. “I had an extraordinary nine weeks in Tunisia shooting Life of Brian,” she recalls, ‘but I turned down a part in ‘The Meaning of Life’. I had to sit opposite a very large man who eats so much that he explodes. I’m a bit squeamish, I’m afraid!”
We move on to talk about ‘A Bit Of A Do’, which I always thought was a magnificent piece of writing, as it followed the shifting fortunes of a small knot of people, played out over a series of social events. “That really was one of my favourites,” she recalls. “And not just because of the cast and writing. The whole genre was wonderful to work in. It was a comedy drama with no audience. When you have a studio audience you work with them to get the laughs. But they can sometimes take over.
“In A Bit of A Do, while you’re aware of the camera, you can create your own moments.” The same is true of her work in Heartbeat – which sadly finished filming some two years ago now. “Some friends said I was very brave making myself look so old in that,” she says “and taking over a role that – effectively – Bill Maynard had made his own. But it was lovely to do and in such a beautiful part of the world too. Mind you, I was lucky – I was always well wrapped up!“
Was it time to finish the show? I don’t think actors ever want things to end, and it was still very popular. But new people came along and thought they wanted a change. It was getting expensive, mind – constantly finding old cars and props. We had major problems one day when we were shooting a scene and realised the hay bales in the field were covered in modern black
plastic!
“One of my regrets is that my old dad was not around to see me in that – he was a mechanic and he would have just loved going into Bernie Scripps’ garage.”
And how about the famous teeth that Peggy always wore? “Oh they’re safe and sound in a little box. Slightly more discoloured than they were though! I might keep them just in case I’m ever asked to attend a reunion.”
Over the next few months you can catch up with The Calendar Girls at
any of the venues below
Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin - Monday 7 - Saturday 19 February
Palace Theatre, Manchester - 21 - Saturday 26 February
Cliffs Pavilion, Southend on Sea - 28 February - Saturday 5 March
Grand Theatre and Opera House, Leeds - 7 - Saturday 19 March
Sunderland Empire - 21 - Saturday 26 March
Milton Keynes Theatre - 28 March - Saturday 9 April
Birmingham Hippodrome - 11 - Saturday 16 April
De Montfort Hall - 26 – 30 April