Sinead Matthews: 'Ivo van Hove thinks we're all bonkers'

Sinead Matthews’ voice is a surprise. It's like a husky squeak. The actress has a rough, raw, layered voice that suggests more than her 36 years. I first heard it in Complicite’s The Master and Margarita at the Barbican in 2012, where she was astonishing opposite Paul Rhys in a mad, manic, magnificent turn which was exhausting to watch.

A protegee of Mike Leigh‘s – who noticed her while she was still at RADA – Matthews’ first job was on the 2004 film Vera Drake. She’s worked with Leigh regularly ever since – including on stage in Ecstasy at Hampstead Theatre in 2011 – and now regards him as a friend. "It’s been 13 years," she says from her dressing room at the National, "and he is incredibly loyal. It’s a gift when somebody does that. Especially when I was really, really nervous [after drama school]."

She’s done a lot since that nerve-wracking time – "I was surprised that I even got an agent!" – and now finds herself at the National Theatre (not for the first time) starring in Hedda Gabler and working with one of the current brightest names in theatre: Ivo van Hove.

"The first time I met him," says Matthews "was on the first day of rehearsals." She was busy the day he was seeing people so she taped her audition and sent it to him. "I was a little disappointed at the time, but I’m actually glad [I wasn't in auditions], because he hates them," she says.

You’d think a director would need to see each of the actors up for a part in Hedda Gabler in person. It's a play with a fairly small cast, and it's on at the National, after all. But it’s an example of the unusual way Belgian visionary van Hove works. Rehearsals, says Matthews, were surprisingly nice. Hours were from 11 to 4 each day ("you miss rush hour!"), they were off book and in costume from the beginning and had only three weeks of work. "He thinks we’re bonkers over here," says Matthews, "he knows exactly what he wants, so he doesn’t change much through rehearsals."

Our chat, which happens while Matthews prepares for an evening performance, is punctured by the appearance of a mouse, or two, running across the floor at the National. The ground-floor dressing room is not unfamiliar with a four-legged friend and instead of making Matthews scream, it makes her giggle she's the sort of person who quickly sees a genuine funny side to everything.

Matthews plays Thea in van Hove’s Hedda, which has been adapted by Patrick Marber. She hadn’t seen or read the play before she took the job and she thinks this may have helped her performance. "All I have is Ivo’s direction and what he wants from the part."

Van Hove's direction reminds her a little of Simon McBurney’s. "Sometimes it is very technical, and actually sometimes that’s just what you want. It creates a wonderful structure for you as an actor to work within," she says. "Sometimes I don’t know what to do with my hands, or I feel a bit awkward, but van Hove deals in the bigger picture."

She talks about her work with McBurney, on The Master and Margarita, with a sense of its importance in her career. "I look back on that as one of the greatest opportunities, creatively, that I have ever had." It was also one of the most difficult: in the first week she contemplated ringing her agent to say she had made "a terrible mistake". She was naked for a big part of the show too, which was a huge challenge. Although by the end, she felt liberated by it. "I was wearing quite a tight dress before I took it off, and I don’t like wearing things that are too tight, so there was this great relief when it came to that moment. It wasn’t about being sexy. But it took me ages to work up to that moment."

In Hedda, her character is a little different than in usual versions of the play. As well as setting it in an unknown place and time, Marber and van Hove have both changed words in the script people usually use to describe Matthews' character. "They don’t want that judgement on [her]. Certain words like naïve they have taken out. Thea is the woman who is doing everything Hedda wishes she could do."

It’s a remarkable production of a remarkable play and, alongside Ruth Wilson, has some remarkable actors in it, not least the remarkable Sinead Matthews.

Hedda Gabler runs at the National Theatre until 21 March 2017.