Spending two hours a night being slowly buried in one of theatre’s most daunting roles leaves Juliet Stevenson “stiff” and “very scared”, but she is enjoying the challenge.
As Samuel Beckett’s Winnie, she spends the entire play trapped in a mound of scree, while remaining optimistic despite her marriage to the uncommunicative Willie.
Stevenson, 57, the star of Atlantis and Truly, Madly, Deeply, and who has performed on stage in Shakespeare, Chekhov and as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, said Winnie was “one of the most challenging, perhaps the most challenging thing, I’ve ever been asked to do”.
But she added: “I’m enjoying it more than I ever imagined. I was very scared and sometimes still am, but then I think how lucky I am. I’m already worried what will happen when she’s no longer around.”
She admitted being buried was uncomfortable. “I get quite stiff — but I do get out at the end of the day. Every moment is fascinating and rich. I couldn’t ask for more as an actor. This is one of the greatest pieces of work I’ve ever worked on. It’s fantastic.”
Winnie was hailed by Dame Peggy Ashcroft, who played her, as being a “summit” role for every actress, similar to the challenge of Hamlet for men.
Stevenson said of Winnie’s witty and stoical character: “She is making me feel fortunate and blessed. But I gather lots of people in the audience see themselves in her. She is trying to fly in her life and her husband has held her down. It’s a play about ordinary lives.”
She said it was also very funny. “In all great writers, like Shakespeare and Beckett, humour comes out of the blackness,” she added.
Although Beckett had very troubled relationships with the women in his life, Stevenson said: “Writing for them, he was exceptionally compassionate and far-sighted and truthful and profoundly understanding.”
