Amanda
Harris as Celia (left) and Lia Williams as Rosalind in
As You Like It
Lia and husband Guy Hibbert relax in their West Hampstead
garden
Lia after winning her Bafta for Best Actress in the BBC
drama ‘May 33rd’ in 2005 |
The garden of delight for Bafta-winning
Lia
Award-winning actress Lia Williams
makes her Royal Shakespeare Company debut in As You Like It,
writes Tom Foot
URBAN and rural worlds collide in Shakespeare’s As You
Like It as characters flee inner-city pressures into the Forest
of Arden, and return rejuvenated.
But who needs Arden when you live in Camden?
The idylls of country life are just on your doorstep, according
to West Hampstead actress Lia Williams set to play the lead
in the RSC’s Shakespeare’s As You Like It in the Novello
Theatre this month.
“It’s my oasis,” says Williams about the communal
garden at her home in Chomley Mansions Aldred Road where she
has lived for seven years.
The West Hampstead block, like many others in the area, has
its own rambling green space not unlike the forest of Arden’s
“shade of melancholy boughs” described in the play.
“I absolutely love West Hampstead,” says Williams
who has won a Bafta award for a television role in ‘May
33rd’. “There’s a real sense of community in
Chomley Gardens – it is a real haven. It’s right next
to Kilburn, which is totally mad, and also the Heath, which
is so restorative. I always change my route when I walk on the
Heath – I like to get lost.”
In the play, Williams plays Rosalind – the most inspirational
of Shakespeare’s strong-willed women – who is banished
to the forest by the tyrant Duke. Dressed as a man, she teaches
the tongue-tied but brave Orlando how to get the girls and in
doing so falls in love.
Williams’ delight in the green pastures of West Hampstead
is not the only parallel between her and the character she plays.
In the play, Rosalind finally gets her man, Shakespeare staging
a surreal wedding scene with the god Hyman floating down on
stage. On the first preview night, when the production opened
in Stratford last summer, Williams experienced her own romantic
fantasy.
With applause still ringing in her ears, her longtime partner
and BBC documentary maker, Guy Hibbert, met her backstage and
proposed.
“I was still in my wedding costume, which was a little
strange,” she says. “I was still buzzing from the
performance. I can’t remember much of it. I was just reading
his lips.”
Her husband’s work for the BBC takes him around the world.
At present, he is filming a documentary about oil prices in
Nigeria.
She says: “It’s a little worrying, given Nigeria is
on the verge of civil war after the Prophet Mohammed cartoons.
I hope he comes back soon.” One person who won’t be
hoping for an unannounced return is Lia’s 16-year-old son
Josh. With his father off travelling the world and his mother
still performing another play in Stratford, the teenager –
who goes to University College School in Hampstead and wants
to be an actor – is looking forward to creating his own
parent-free utopia in the West Hampstead pad.
She says: “This is the first time I’ve felt like I
can leave him alone. I don’t think he’s too worried
about us both being away. In fact, I think he’s quite looking
forward to it.”
Williams – who has performed in a host of West End shows
and television productions – does not think her own successes
have given her son false ambitions.
She says: “He has seen me fail and he has his head screwed
on. I don’t think he has any false romantic impressions
about becoming an actor. I think he knew from a very early age
and we will support him all the way.”
Williams is still performing Brett Neveu – a story of community,
murder and revenge – in Stratford and must return for two
weeks before As You Like It starts in London.
She says: “It’s such a change to play the grieving,
rotting Janice in that play. It certainly affects your mood.
I’m euphoric when I’ve been rehearsing Rosalind. She
represents life’s possibilities and freedom. Playing her
was an incredible opportunity.”
As You Like It is the climax of the RSC’s season of Shakespeare’s
comedies.
The story has only just finished in the West End, David Lan’s
innovative production – set in 1940s France with Sienna
Miller as Celia in the Wyndham’s Theatre – will be
fresh in the memory of Shakespeare enthusiasts. Another dose,
from the RSC, known for a more conventional approach, may seem
too soon. But Williams ensures the RSC production, directed
by the acclaimed Dominic Cooke, has hit the right notes in striving
for simplicity.
She says: “The set is simply an enormous oak tree. It looks
so real as if it has grown through the set. It is exquisitely
straightforward and there is something refreshing about the
set – it gets to the truth of the text.”
Ms Williams, who loves to eat at the Gung-ho Szechwan restaurant
and rates the polenta cakes in the Wet Fish Café in West
End Lane, is good friends with the Tricycle Theatre’s Nick
Kent. The actress – who was nominated for a Bafta for her
performance of a woman with a multiple-personality disorder
on television in 2004 – believes the Kilburn theatre is
one of the best in the country. She hopes to perform there one
day.
She says: “The Tricycle is one of the best theatres in
the country. We are very lucky to have it here on our doorstep.
All their shows are worth seeing and I am a big fan of their
commitment to new writing.”
Perhaps The Tricycle will be the venue for her debut script,
a joint effort from her and her husband, which has commissioned
by the BBC. Williams remains tight-lipped.
She says: “I can’t tell you too much about that yet.
You’ll have to wait and see.”
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