Interview

Sheila Hancock

Sheila Hancock is one of our leading actresses, who has recently found a new career as an author, via her deeply moving and often very entertaining book, The Two of Us, about her marriage to the late John Thaw, of Sweeney and Inspector Morse fame. She is currently starring as the Mother From Hell in The Anniversary at the Garrick Theatre. In real life she's quite the opposite, as Paul Webb was relieved to find when he met her in her dressing room...

The Anniversary is a very funny play, and your character is outrageous - it must be fun to play, but do you mind being seen as the Mother in Law from Hell? "No, because it's only a part - and I'm actually the real-life mother-in-law to the play's producer, Matthew Byam Shaw!"

It's good to have you back on the London stage... "Thank you! It's great to be back, and I also enjoyed playing The Anniversary out of town. We had very good reactions from audiences. This is a play I've got a long association with - I was in the original stage production, and also in the film version with Bette Davis, and now I'm playing the same role as her on stage, so I'm very happy the play has been revived.

"It's always a bit of a gamble with bringing back plays that are very much of their period - like Rattle Of A Simple Man, which was on at the Comedy Theatre last year. I was in the original 1960s production: it seemed very daring then, but it came across as rather coy when it was seen through 21st century eyes. The Anniversary seems to be more timeless..."

There's a very strong revival of a Terence Rattigan play, Man and Boy, at the Duchess Theatre at the moment. In your book you touch on your first husband, Alec Ross, and his friendship with Rattigan... "Yes, and Rattigan was very jealous of me... I was once in a production of T S Eliot's The Cocktail Party and Rattigan came to see it. He visited everyone in their dressing room afterwards - except me!"

Your book has put you in the public eye in a different way to your reputation as a stage, film and television star. Have you had much direct reaction to it from the public? "Yes, a lot. In fact I had several new letters just today. It has touched a deep nerve with people who have themselves lost a husband or partner..."

The Two of Us is a very open, honest book, especially in its account of John Thaw's alcoholism. "It is, and I was initially nervous about the honesty of the account, but then I thought if I didn't write about it someone else eventually would."

I thought the book worked on several levels, and one of the things that most struck me was your recreation of the theatrical London of the 1950s... "I'm glad that people have felt that way. It was an interesting time, and so different from today. When I was being interviewed by Jonathan Ross, he said it sounded very glamorous, but I don't think that's really the word - it was theatrical, though, and there was a sort of camaraderie. In those days a lot of the actors' agents were located in little offices up and down the Charing Cross Road, so you'd often bump into people you knew as they went the rounds looking for work, and pubs like the Salisbury had a real atmosphere back then."

It's also fascinating in its account of the gay world at that time "Well, a lot of my friends, both men and women, have been gay, and the way society has reacted to them has changed out of all recognition - and very much for the better - since the 1950s. There was an attitude of fear about it then, and some horrible events - like the row surrounding John Gielgud's prosecution, so in a way the book has a certain amount of social history in it."

One of your gay friends was Kenneth Williams? There's a very poignant description of the last time you saw him, when he was more or less a broken man... "He wasn't at all happy by that stage, and was very depressed about the way his mother's health had declined. When I first knew him it was because we were both in theatrical revues, which were high camp and great fun. But by the end of his life he had trouble finding work - or work that enjoyed and respected - and eventually it all got too much for him."

In The Two Of Us you deal with your own grief over John Thaw's death - poetry was something you enjoyed, and has helped you through? "It did. As I say in the book I'm not at all fond of that 'Death Is Nothing At All' poem that is often used at funerals, and there are other much better poems that are much more of a help at times like that. As for getting over a death, you have to carry on and eventually move on, and I'm not sure that counselling is necessarily the best way. Everyone's reaction to a death is different and there's no set formula that you can apply to everyone's grief."

The Anniversary seems to me to be one way of getting your spirits up - it's one of the funniest plays I've seen in a long time! "Thanks - I agree! We've got a great company and I'm having a very good time playing in it. Work is a great therapy and I love the whole thing of being back in the theatre - the dressing room, the rituals, the flowers..."

Do you have a favourite theatre restaurant, to relax in after the show? "I like Sheekey's, The Ivy and The Wolseley - they're all fun. And I used to go to Joe Allen's a lot more. They're used to actors and they don't get upset if you're a bit late at your table because the show was delayed."

Buy The Anniversary tickets

By Paul Webb
Thursday February 24