The Stage

Spiro’s inspired roles

Published Friday 26 June 2009 at 15:30 by Nick Smurthwaite

Currently starring as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in Regent’s Park, Samantha Spiro talks to Nick Smurthwaite about the varied roles she has performed over her career, from impersonating Barbara Windsor to playing Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl

Like Hannah Waddingham and Jenna Russell, Spiro has emerged as a formidable West End player, whose name guarantees a high-definition performance. However, outside London, these superlative talents are scarcely known.

It is clearly not something that keeps the diminutive actor awake at night. “I feel very content,” she says. “I never feel I should be craving for more, because I have a very happy family life [she is married with two young children] and my career is going well.”

Since winning an Olivier for best actress in a musical for her performance in Merrily We Roll Along at the Donmar Warehouse in 2000, Spiro has proved her versatility by tackling a succession of challenging and contrasting roles, from Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl in Chichester last year, to Maria in the Donmar’s acclaimed Twelfth Night earlier this year.

At present she is playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in Regent’s Park. In her review for this paper, Susan Elkin noted: “Spiro’s deliciously unladylike Beatrice, forthright and feisty with her funny voices. But she also captures that brittle, sad quality in what is, arguably, Shakespeare’s best female role.”

In August she will star in the Park’s 2009 musical offering Hello, Dolly!, in what is probably the first open-air production of the 1964 Broadway hit. Regardless of the challenge of reinventing a 45-year-old show for a new generation of theatregoers, there is little doubt that the dynamic Spiro will banish any lingering memories of Carol Channing (Broadway) or Dora Bryan (West End). She has a habit of making roles her own.

It is more than 30 years since she was first bewitched by the magic of “the Park”, as a ten-year-old member of the audience. “I was doing a school play at the time, so I was already keen on drama, but something about seeing a play done in the open air in broad daylight really caught my imagination,” she recalls. “I never looked back after that.”

She joined the National Youth Theatre and later trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

“My parents were really supportive, but at the same time they encouraged me to continue with my formal education, so that I’d have the choice later of whether or not to pursue my wish to go on the stage, or to choose some other career.”

Who were her role models in the early days? “The same ones they are today - Judi Dench and Julie Walters. I admire them both enormously and nobody ever has a bad word to say about either of them.”

Like them, Spiro has the capacity to bring vast reserves of humour to her work - whether it is Beatrice in Much Ado or impersonating Barbara Windsor in Terry Johnson’s 2000 comedy Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick, the play she credits with “opening a lot of doors for me”.

Decked out with a blonde beehive, a cheeky grin and the trademark Windsor cackle, Spiro became almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

“I took her on board completely,” she recalls. “I sat down and watched all the Carry On films, then I watched them again and again, plus of course, EastEnders was on twice a week. My mum looked very much like Barbara when she was younger, so there’s already a resemblance in the genes.

“When Barbara came to see the show at the National, I could hear her laughing in the audience, even before I made my entrance. She really got the audience going and afterwards she came round to my dressing room with champagne, flowers and balloons. We just fell into each other’s arms, crying. The whole thing had been so emotional for both of us, I think.”

Spiro went on to play Windsor in the TV movie version of the play, re-titled Cor Blimey!. Does she prefer doing theatre to films and TV?

“I think theatre prefers me,” she says. “These days you have to do both, but it never feels as if the TV casting people are beating down my door to offer me work. I just feel that in this business you are lucky if you’re doing something you enjoy.

“Being offered something like Funny Girl took me completely by surprise. I’ve never really thought of myself as a singer. Maybe it is something about the energy I have that lends itself to musicals. I was scared stiff of doing Fanny Brice, but I loved every second of it. I never thought I’d be offered another big musical so soon.”

Emboldened by the success of Funny Girl and, before that, Merrily We Roll Along, she says she has now started to think in terms of other musical roles she might be suited to - Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd, the mother in Gypsy. However, she adds that she would just as soon have a crack at Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew.

Does she feel any more secure now than she did when she started out 18 years ago, playing Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park?

“Actors are never secure. As soon as you finish a job, you think you’re never going to work again. I never feel I’m getting anywhere or that I’m on a roll. I never seem to be able to apply any logic to my career. I’m just grateful when a job comes along.”

What advice would she give to a young actor starting out today?

“Don’t be afraid of failing or of what other people think, and try to have a sense of humour about what you’re doing. Work with the best people, if you can, and learn from them.”

Much Ado About Nothing runs at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, London, until June 27