Casualty launches Barbara on stage

IT WAS on the day that her local greengrocer thanked her for shopping in his store that Barbara Marten realised she had become one of those recognisable faces from the telly.

But then, as Sister Eve Montgomery in the long-running BBC medical drama Casualty, the Leeds-born actress did rule the A&E wards of Holby City for two years, creating one of the few really strong female characters to be found on television outwith the world of soap opera.

With a slightly guilty laugh, however, Marten admits that it was a part she – initially at least – had to be persuaded to consider.

"I remember my youngest son was very little when my agent phoned and said, 'They want to see you for Casualty tomorrow'. I replied, 'Don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to Bristol (where the series is filmed] tomorrow. I'm taking my son to playgroup.' I was in mother and child mode at the time."

Luckily, her agent and the Casualty casting directors refused to take no for an answer.

"My agent called back to say they would see me the following week, so I went along and took my youngest son with me," she recalls.

"But my agent was absolutely right. I had to go to be seen for it. That job gave directors a face to hang my name on, so when I left Casualty there was a good spurt of work, all because my profile was just that little bit higher. It was a bit like being in Corrie."

It was when her six-week contact was extended by a year, that Marten quickly discovered the recognition that being in a long-running series brings.

"Casualty is a national institution and the scale of recognition it brought quite took me by surprise," she confesses. "It was funny. I would walk down the street and people would smile at me. I'd think, 'What a nice world. She must be really nice because she's smiling at me'. Then I realised it was only because I was on the bloody telly. When my local green- grocer said, 'Thank you very much for shopping in our shop', I thought, 'Oh God, this is awful. People are thanking me for doing my shopping'. It's an odd side-effect of being an actor that you can't take seriously."

That character, which Marten played from November 1997 to October 1999, ensured she would be no stranger to small screen audiences – since leaving the show she has appeared in episodes of Where the Heart Is, The Royal, Rome, EastEnders, Silent Witness, Dalziel And Pascoe and as copper's wife Laura Meadows in The Bill.

But it also kept her away from the stage, where she insists the best parts "for a woman in her 50s" are to be found.

One such role is that of Amanda, which Marten plays in The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' award-winning portrayal of a disintegrating family in America's Deep South, and the first 2008 production from the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company.

The piece – which opens tonight with a discounted First Look preview performance – is one of Williams' most sensitive and tragic plays. It tells the story of Amanda, a mother who has struggled to raise her children, Tom and Laura, during the Depression. Now, fearing that her shy, crippled daughter will end up an old spinster she is seeking to marry her off, worried that her son will abandon them both to seek out a life of his own elsewhere.

Laura's reclusive life revolves around her collection of glass animals, each as delicate and fragile as herself. When Tom brings a friend home to meet her, everything changes and she finally believes there is a chance she can be happy.

However, between her mother's oppressive sense of futile hope and her brother's private endeavours to better himself, Laura and her glass menagerie face an uncertain future.

Believed by many to be heavily autobiographical, the character Tom mimics Williams' own life with his mother (the character Amanda) and his sickly and disturbed sister Rose (Laura in the play).

The York-based actress elaborates, "The Glass Menagerie has an autobiographical element drawn from Williams' early life – about how he found himself living in St Louis with his mother and sister and why he had to get away in order to realise himself as a writer."

A self-confessed people watcher, Marten read up on Williams and his early years while researching her role.

"I like to try to suss people out. I'm interested in why people do what they do and make the choices they make. I'm also interested in peoples' stories. Stories about their early life or their parents – you can make up a full picture of a person that way.

"It's like that in a play. You have to track back to discover what has happened to make this woman behave the way she does."

In the case of Amanda, Marten says she had to ask herself a number of questions. "I love immersing myself in somebody's story. Plays are usually about a crisis situation and people trying to move forward in their life and I am fascinated by how people tick.

"How did this southern belle, who had been brought up to be a decoration, bring up a family during the depression?

"She finds herself dropped into this other world and a sink- or-swim situation that she was not brought up to deal with – she doesn't have any skills other than the art of conversation.

"Like Williams' mother, Amanda could not even cook because she was brought up with servants – Williams' mother would spend all day trying to cook one meal."

Written before his other major works – A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof – The Glass Menagerie is one of Williams' most intimate and heartbreaking personal dramas, examining how fragile the human heart can be, and how easily it can be broken by society.

It premiered in Chicago in 1944, winning the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award a year later.

The Royal Lyceum production is directed by Jemima Levick, who was nominated for the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland as Best Director, for the Lyceum's 2005 production of A Christmas Carol.

Joining Marten in the cast are Nicola Harrison, Antony Eden and Joseph Arkley.

Marten, meanwhile, can't wait to bring her portrayal of Amanda to the Lyceum tonight, the first time she will have appeared on a Scottish stage.

She says, "It has been wonderful to come to this fantastic role in such an amazing, well- written, well-crafted play."

• The Glass Menagerie, Royal Lyceum, Grindlay Street, Saturday-February 9 (not Mondays), 7.45pm (matinees 2.30pm), 11-25 (preview tonight 5), 0131-248 4848