Theatre

‘This is nice. I wish I could sit here more often,’ says Margaret Tyzack, looking at the Donmar Warehouse stage on which she performs nightly. Peter McKintosh’s detailed set is of a Sussex conservatory circa 1956, the setting for Enid Bagnold’s ‘The Chalk Garden’. It was here that two weeks ago an emotional press-night audience refused to be satisfied with a single curtain call and rose to its feet when he company finally came back to take another bow. ‘There must be something in the play that people are hungry for,’ says Tyzack. ‘I love the fact that it’s so non-PC. It makes me laugh so much.'

It’s true that Bagnold’s comedy is unexpectedly sharp and witty. But as one of the people in the audience, I know that we were applauding the performances as much as the play, and especially Penelope Wilton as the mysterious Miss Madrigal and Tyzack as the self-obsessed, lonely Mrs St Maugham who appears to be quite barking. Tyzack has a clarity and relaxed confidence – just watch the way that she raises an eyebrow – that is rarely seen among young actors today, especially when she is first heard offstage asking ‘Are my teeth on the table?’, or explaining her failure to talk to someone sitting locked in her room with the words that ‘one is rarely at one’s best through mahogany’. If most of us went to the Donmar Warehouse anticipating a conventional drawing-room comedy, the teeth line alone was enough to confound expectations. The production is now sold out, but must surely transfer. Feature continues

At 71, Tyzack is just as keen to work as ever. But don’t get her started on some of the parts that come her way, scripts that talk about old people as ‘crone-like’ or ‘witch-like’, or have such helpful descriptions as ‘She’s 65, but still functioning’. The words pour out as she says: ‘There are certain parts I’ve been offered that you wouldn’t consider. The function of the role is to be abused. It isn’t funny. It isn’t clever. It isn’t truthful.’

Like so many of her generation, Tyzack says she learnt her craft in weekly rep. I suggest that standards can hardly have been high if they only had a week to rehearse. ‘Not at all,’ she retorts. Her director was Chloe Gibson, who went on to become a hotshot in TV. ‘She was very, very strict. It was the hardest work I’ve ever known. She knew what she was doing. I’ve spent far too many rehearsals with some jerk of a director just fiddling around with the moves. A lot of rehearsal time can be wasted moving people. If the director ever comes up with the deathly phrase of “Let’s go on a journey of discovery together”, you know they’ve not read the play more than once.’

Then came ‘The Forstye Saga’, in 1967, in which she played Winifred, Soames’s sister. Legend has it that the series led to the decline of Sunday evensong as the church couldn’t compete with the sensational events in the Forsyte family. Following that, Tyzack was in constant demand, including parts in ‘I, Claudius’ and ‘Cousin Bette’ . Then she joined the RSC where she played Volumnia in ‘Coriolanus’, Tamora in ‘Titus Andronicus’ and Portia in ‘Julius Caesar’. ‘I’ve always played older than myself,’ she explains. ‘I’ve just about caught up now. I worked with Trevor Nunn before he was Trevor Nunn.’ ‘You helped make him Trevor Nunn,’ I say. ‘I should point that out to him if I was you,’ she says with a glint in her eye.

She’s an old trouper. When she and Maggie Smith were appearing in the very long running ‘Lettuce and Lovage’ in New York (for which
Tyzack won a Tony award in 1991 ), an American actor, who was playing Mozart in ‘Amadeus’, missed a performance because his dog had been mauled in the park. The dog had recovered and was absolutely fine. ‘Maggie said to me, “Blimey! If we had been mauled in the park, we would have still gone on.” And she was right.’

Gaps between work are spent with family and friends and going to the theatre. “How about gardening?’ I ask, gesturing at all the pots and trugs on stage. ‘Are you kidding? I’m about as successful as Mrs St Maugham. I don’t understand holidays and retirement and I don’t think many actors do.’

‘The Chalk Garden’ is playing at the Donmar Warehouse until Aug 2.