Susan Wooldridge On … Oscar Wilde in the Open Air

Actress Susan Wooldridge plays the “handbagging” role of Lady Bracknell in a new production of Oscar Wilde’s classic 1895 comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, which starts previews tomorrow at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, where her actress-mother Margaret Scott (also a two-time Lady B) performed in the 1930s. It’s the first non-Shakespeare play for adults staged at the theatre in more than 20 years. Wooldridge is best known for her TV roles in the likes of The Jewel in the Crown, Hope and Glory and Bad Company. Her recent stage credits include Don’t Look Now, Tonight at 8.30, Playhouse Creatures, Celebration, The Price, Three Sisters and The Deep Blue Sea. Her debut novel, a 1930s-set romance entitled The Hidden Dance, is published next week.

I’m in my middle years so I’m the right age to play the Lady Bracknell that I can see on the page. I don’t know if I can actually bring her to the stage but we hope so. It’s a fantastic challenge. Lady Bracknell is such an iconic role because she’s so brilliantly written and she offers a whole range of interpretation. You can see why so many have lusted to play her, me being one of them. Of course, Dame Edith Evans, with her interpretation, made the “handbag” reference very famous. Every time I mention to people that I’m doing this, the reply comes back “oh, handbags at dusk” or “how is the handbagging going?”. It’s the word that is connected with the part.

My mother played Lady Bracknell twice: first of all in Sheffield in the Seventies, then again at the Old Vic at the end of the Eighties, beginning of the Nineties. About a month before I was asked to do it here, someone I had never met before said, “I’ve been longing to meet you to say that your mother was the best Lady Bracknell I ever saw.” It’s true she was simply wonderful.

I’m sort of trying to wrestle the baton from her. When we started rehearsals, I could hear very clearly my mother’s shape of sentences and therefore to some extent the intention of her thoughts. But with Irina Brown, who’s such a good director, I would try to get to the heart of the matter rather than just saying the lines how they’ve always been said. So mother has become more of a guardian angel now hovering somewhere in the background.

Mother also performed many of Shakespeare’s wonderful heroines here at Regent’s Park, long before I was born. When I was a little girl, growing up in London, we’d come for walks in the park and sometimes we would sneak into the theatre grounds through a special place in the hedge she knew about. On one occasion, she took us to a dress rehearsal of The Tempest. I remember screaming with terror at Caliban, played by Robert Hopkins, and being absolutely entranced by Ariel. After that, when I was growing, I saw various other productions here. It’s a place of some magic for me and some memory. It’s wonderful that I now get to skip across the footlights to play this extraordinary woman.

I like that Timothy Sheader is presenting Oscar Wilde this year, instead of another Shakespeare. Remixing things is always a good idea. I’ve never performed in the open air, except maybe in my garden at home. One does have to address the vocal challenge. In a theatre building, of course, the roof contains the sound and bounces it towards you. The theatre here is in the shape of a bowl, a kind of crucible, and I’m very aware of the voice sort of circling around the audience. Of course, music sounds beautiful in a space like this. Interestingly, WH Auden said that The Importance of Being Earnest is the one real theatrical opera of the British stage – I think Wilde would have approved of our vocal challenge here.

The weather, of course, presents another challenge, especially when it’s very hot and we’re wearing Edwardian corsets on stage! As for the Regent’s Park audience, they’re always so eager and attentive. As Timothy himself said in a very good speech on our first day, people are going to be fully aware of what the weather’s like before they come so if they come anyway despite the weather, that makes them dig their heels and be very defiant. Sometimes, if it’s slightly hard work, it’s not only good for the soul but it makes for an even more receptive occasion.

The same week that we open my debut novel, The Hidden Dance, is published. It took me ten years to write and I started because, as a lot of my female contemporaries have found, once you approach middle years, the acting roles dry up. Directors, producers and writers in this country seem to think that middle-aged women vanish, only to appear years later as aunties and grannies. It’s a sad thing that happens because very often the reverse is happening to the person; one becomes more confident and more daring with experience and maturity. So eventually I thought, oh sod this! I decided to do something where I wasn’t dependent on anybody else for a job. By writing a novel, I could in a sense become my own director, designer, composer … everything! It was a lovely feeling of power.

It’s extraordinary having the two things – the book publication and the play opening – at once. It means that at 4 o’clock in the morning when I get up I either go into 200% panic or I don’t go into any panic at all because they kind of balance each other. I’m trying to be as Zen as possible about it and just think what a lucky pixie I am.

– Susan Wooldridge was speaking to Terri Paddock

The Importance of Being Earnest runs at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park from 8 to 25 July 2009 (previews from 3 July). The Hidden Dance (Allison & Busby Ltd, hardback £12.99) is published on 6 July 2009.