Interview: Siobhan Redmond, actress in The Secret Garden

Published on Tuesday 30 November 2010 19:03

'So far what I've read about Mrs Medlock is that she is stout, has very high colouring, a rather common hat and black boot button eyes," Siobhan Redmond tells me. "I can do, what, two, three out of four? The hair, the hat… and there's still plenty of time to tuck into the cheese board."

It is early autumn, and Redmond has just landed the role of the "frosty but faithful" housekeeper, Mrs Medlock, in Edinburgh Festival Theatre's Christmas production of The Secret Garden. Redmond has some catching up to do. Until now she has never read the 1911 Frances Hodgson Burnett novel that the show is based upon.

The Secret Garden is a musical, with a book and lyrics by Marsha Norman - who won a Tony and a Drama Desk award for the show - and music by Lucy Simon. Redmond is the only non-singing cast member. "At no time in recorded history do reviews ever say, 'her beautiful contralto'." she hoots. "Would that they did. I loved singing when I was a kid, but now, if required to do it, I'd have to do a great deal of practice."

For those who haven't read the book, the heroine of The Secret Garden, young Mary Lennox, is orphaned in India when her parents are killed and sent to live with distant relations in England who inhabit a spooky mansion on the Yorkshire moors. Prowling around, she discovers a sickly cousin, Colin, hidden away in a remote part of the house, and outdoors, a secret walled garden. When she brings the little boy and the neglected garden together, both are revived in the most remarkable way.

"They're all terribly aware at the beginning of Mary's stay that they're sitting where tectonic plates meet," says Redmond. "Things could go wrong. They have gone wrong disastrously in the past, and they might go wrong again in an even more spectacular way at any minute. Mary is hemmed in by that restrictive atmosphere."

Meeting again two weeks before opening night, I can't help observing that Redmond is still slim, and hasn't altered those distinctive grey-green eyes, so I wonder how the character's coming along. "My Mrs Medlock is in the great tradition of Northern women whose chief characteristic is that they are unimpressed - except by diligence," she says. "As the piece goes on, the little girl merits, albeit grudgingly, respect from Mrs Medlock. Her importance is chiefly symbolic. I am having a very light time of it and I'm liking watching other people work. I still find it quite astonishing that people can open their mouths, sing really beautifully, while dancing and acting, and not need to have a blood transfusion or an hour's therapy at the end of it. It's amazing to be around these fabulous beasts."

Redmond dismisses the showbusiness adage advising against working with children or animals. "Children who are good at it are really good because they've not had time to become self-conscious and self-regarding. I enjoy working with children because it affects everything from the vocabulary that one can use in the rehearsal room, through to that feeling of excitement that they bring to the show, and a protective feeling that all the adults have towards them. We have two lots of kids and one lot of understudies. And they do school work while we're milling around having cappuccino."

This is a story about grief, mourning and loss… "And ghosts, and people working under their potential," Redmond finishes. "I think children are all right with that; they're not afraid of that stuff, in the way that adults sometimes are. Though it's not such an obvious pantomime or Christmas story, what you have in this story is lots of secrets, lots of ghosts, people discovering that they can do things they didn't think they could do - or that they are people that they didn't know that they were, in a good way. And finding a green place, and love, in what appears to be a wilderness. With songs! Who could ask for anything more?"

It's a very female-centric production, from a novel by a woman, with a female director, Anna Linstrum, and the central figure in it is a little girl. Even the book and music were written by women. Does that affect the working environment? "I'm really liking working with Anna," says Redmond, "but I don't know if it's because she's a woman or because of the woman she is. She's very good at creating an atmosphere of calm. There's a very relaxed but alert feeling, which is great."

Another appeal of the role was the venue. "I've never done a Christmas show in Edinburgh. I like working in big theatres because it requires you to use different muscles. This year I've worked in two really small theatres, and it's always interesting to get a completely different take on things. These big theatres are places that I want to play while there's still time."

What does she mean? "Theatre is having to change all the time to provide something you can't get from any other art forms. We have to do a lot to try and get a young audience because you have to get into the habit of going to the theatre. As we all know, a bad night in the theatre is a truly terrible night and not always cheap. You have to get into the habit of going so that one bad experience won't put you off."

After Edinburgh, The Secret Garden moves to Toronto where, she jokes, the weather will make our recent snowstorms look puny. But next spring she returns to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre with David Greig's Dunsinane, which won plaudits in London at the start of 2010.

A sequel to Macbeth, it finds Malcolm on the throne and Gruach - that's Lady Macbeth's given name - masterfully manipulating the political situation, having not taken her own life, as she does in Shakespeare's play.

The new production will again be directed by Roxana Silbert, who'll need to re-tool it to accommodate the new venue. The Hampstead Theatre is tiny, with the audience ranged on either side of the stage, so actors made exits and entrances through the crowd. "I don't know what Roxana has in mind for the Lyceum," says Redmond, pointing out that rehearsals don't begin until late April. "It's a nice theatre, though, with a good feeling of intimacy. It's very exciting to be able to do the play in Scotland, and I'm very excited to be able to part of it again."

All I remember from Shakespeare is endless hand washing. What is Greig's vision of Gruach? Redmond smiles. "Another character says to her, ‘Winter, that's what you are.' But I don't think that that covers it. She's a compelling creature who is extremely adept politically and sexually as well. She is a very powerful woman who knows how to use what she's been given.

"One thing that took me a long while to understand is that she appears to be always the same in different contexts. She is, to an extent, unreadable. That was a terrifying prospect, not least because I am not instinctively drawn to performers who I feel are withholding from you. She will give you a face for that day, which is almost exactly identical to the face she showed you yesterday, but there will have been some sort of change.

"Another thing that worried me was that people would think there was no development, no progression of any kind. Normally, if you want a person who is disciplined and held in, you don't come to me. So it's a pleasant change."

Does she feel Gruach was maligned in Shakespeare's portrayal? "Well, he's telling a good story. In actual fact, the Macbeths - you see I'm not superstitious, but hell mend me if the Festival Theatre comes crashing down around us - ruled Scotland peacefully at a time when that was more or less unprecedented, and for a long time. Now, they may not have been Sunday school teachers, but they did it. By the standards of their day they were good rulers.

"In David's play she's a very astute woman, aware that men project on to her all kinds of archetypes. At one point her son says, ‘My mother's a witch. She can cast spells. Snow will come and she will bring it.' She exploits what people think of her. She's aware that she's got a bad rep and when it's useful to her, she just goes with it. She's the woman that we'd all like to be, a cool customer.

"If you live in an age when a man can come in at any minute and cut your head off with an axe - only after he's done a whole variety of other unspeakable things to you - life has a different kind of quality. You have to be able to live in the moment in a way that in our society we don't necessarily have to. And she's a cultured woman. The real Macbeths went on a pilgrimage to Rome. So she's seen a bit of the world. She knows how many beans make five." v

The Secret Garden is at Edinburgh Festival Theatre from Thursday until 8 January www.secretgardenmusical.co.uk

This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on December 5, 2010