Interview: Nicola Roy, actress, Educating Agnes

ARNOLPHE is an ageing bachelor with an unhealthy fear of being cuckolded, perhaps understandably given his penchant for women half his age. However, he has a cunning solution to overcome that fear. Arnolphe will get in early with his pure, innocent ward Agnes and mould her into the ideal wife - one who is too ignorant to be unfaithful.

But unbeknown to him, 17-year-old Agnes, recently released from the convent where she has been brought up, has already fallen in love... with Horace, the first fresh-faced youth she encountered on gaining her freedom.

The proud history of Scots-French collaboration is resurrected at the Royal Lyceum tomorrow when the curtain rises on Educating Agnes, a translation by Scotland's national poet Liz Lochhead of French playwright Molire's farcical comedy, The School For Wives.

Crafted with Lochhead's razor-sharp wit, the production remains faithful to Molire's style of rhyming couplets and stars 26-year-old Edinburgh actress Nicola Roy as the chaste Agnes.

A former Lyceum Youth theatre member, it's Roy's second professional appearance at the theatre - she played Dolina in last year's critically acclaimed stage show of John Byrne's translation of The Cherry Orchard.

Roy credits her time with the Lyceum Youth Theatre, in part, for inspiring her to take up acting as a career.

"I was a member of the first ever Youth Theatre Group at the Lyceum," she says.

"I think I was probably about 13 or 14 when I started. Colin Brady ran it and it was brilliant because we got fantastic opportunities to do shows and the festival. Now it's so fantastic to be back here in a professional capacity on the main stage.

"From a very young age I always knew I wanted to be an actress. At school I was quite academic and I think some of the teachers tried to push me along that road. But I knew that I never wanted to do that. The Lyceum Youth Theatre just inspired me and made me see that it was possible actually to be an actor and that can be a career."

After spending a year in London following her graduation from Rose Bruford College, Roy says she started landing roles in Scotland in television series such as Hope Springs and River City, so she decided to relocate north of the border.

Her latest role presents a challenge for her, in identifying with her butter-wouldn't-melt character.

"I suppose we all have innocence within us, but it's almost as if she's been frozen in time," she admits. "Her level of innocence is such that I would probably put her around a 12-year-old nowadays. She's very sweet, she's a lovely character, I suppose in myself, I'd like to think I'm a little bit bolshier than Agnes as a person.

"She's had a very different experience growing up than I have. She's been kept in complete ignorance and I think I've been exposed to quite a lot in my life. We're quite different, I would say."

Although Arnolphe's plan to marry a young girl who has been in his care since the age of four has disturbing connotations, Roy says she can empathise with him.

"I think he's deluded. He's never going to achieve what he wants, but I can identify with what he's trying to do, he's not a bad man.

"Arnolphe wants to keep Agnes almost like a child, he wants to groom her in a way to be the perfect wife.

"He has in his mind what a perfect wife is, she's innocent, she's obedient and a good person. Agnes is all those things. She would be the perfect wife.

"I think the story is timeless. It would be very unusual these days to be set up for what is essentially an arranged marriage, but the truth of the story is still relevant. You can't stop people doing what they want. You can't stop instinct, you can't stop someone loving somebody.

"As Agnes says, 'I didn't choose to love Horace, it was a fait accompli before I took pause'."

Working with a script crafted by the country's top poet is something Roy says she is revelling in.

"Liz Lochhead's done a fantastic translation. She has such a gift for language. She's written it in rhyme, but it's absolutely in Scots.

"The language is actually modern, there are phrases that you would recognise today. Liz uses her words as weapons, and it's such a gift for an actor to be able to use them. They're very wicked rhyming couplets, they're very sharp."

Educating Agnes, Royal Lyceum, Grindlay Street, tomorrow-May 7, 7.30 pm (matinees 2.30pm), 12.50-28, 0131-248 4848