Interview: Maureen Lipman brings panto magic to Richmond

>SUBSCRIBE FOR THE BEST THINGS TO DO EVERY WEEKEND<

Maureen Lipman has loved pantomime ever since she was a child, and was taken to the annual festive shindig in Hull by her mum. “Every year, I would be there on the edge of my seat, breathless, in my nap coat with the elasticated gloves hanging through the sleeves,” says Maureen. “As soon as they said, ‘is there any child who’d like to come up on stage?’, up I went.”

“I just loved variety. And I liked the story being told, because these fairy stores teach you things about life much more than issues being pumped at you in various guises on television. Fairy stories have a moral.”

She’s looking forward to playing Mrs Potty in Beauty and the Beast in Richmond, and is no stranger to its stage having toured there as Florence Foster Jenkins in Glorious, and played the Wicked Witch in the theatre’s 2016 panto Sleeping Beauty.

 “I hope it is as much fun as last time,” she says. It’ll be a demanding two shows a day. She remarks on her age: 78. “I hope I have the stamina. And I can only do my best. The audiences give you energy… whether they give you energy twice a day I couldn’t tell you.” But she couldn’t resist the offer to come back: “It just seemed like a good idea at the time, and because I’ve got a history of pantomime in my bones.”

(Scroll to keep reading)

During her first panto, Aladdin at Watford Palace, aged 21, she remembers being teased….“I was sent up rotten by the dame, Kevin, because I was heard on the telephone saying to my mother that I was deeply tired. So they called me DT, deeply tired, after that.”

Maureen trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and went on to appear in over 30 West End roles, as well as starring in multiple sitcoms and TV plays of her late husband Jack Rosenthal. Her film credits include Up the Junction, Educating Rita and The Pianist. Most recently, she has been playing the role of Evelyn Plummer in Coronation Street. Maureen was made a dame in 2020 for her services to the arts. 

Our interview takes place just as the news breaks of Dame Maggie Smith’s death. Maureen reflects: “I’ve watched Maggie since I was at the Old Vic in 1970. I watched her do things no one else has ever done on stage. It is a big blow. We will look back on her career and we will never see its like again. She was completely unique. It’s a deeply sad day for British theatre.”

Maureen is making the most of her later years. She has just announced her engagement to her partner David Turner, although she wasn’t quite prepared for how public it would become, and the support she has had. “It has been amazing, from strangers in the street to messages from all over the world. Like it matters… we’ve been together for a while.”

The news was revealed in her diary in The Spectator. “I commented that I started the week with an angiogram and finished it with a pancake and in between I got engaged. Then every newspaper reported it. Maybe I shouldn’t have revealed it like that. Part of the piece was about how we tell his three children and my two children. It was like a Jack Rosenthal play.”

Maureen was married to Jack from 1974 until his death from cancer in 2004. She married again to computer expert Guido Castro, who died in 2021.

There’s no date set, or any wedding plans as yet. “We’re just getting through from Friday to Friday,” she says.

Their families will come to watch the panto. Maureen has two young grandchildren. “I do it for the kids really. They loved it when I did the last one. And it’s nice to have children backstage as opposed to… critics. And I ask the kids which bit did you like best, and of course, it’s never the bit with you in it.”

So, what’s the enduring appeal of the panto? “It’s just very British,” she says. But for Maureen, she prefers to keep it traditional and close to the original story. “The bits I used to hate was all the shtick with the custard pies. I never liked that as a child.”

 “And you have got to get the balance right between the adults who bring the children and the children. A good pantomime will serve that difference. Half the audience will never have heard of me or of Evelyn Plummer. Or Beattie – I’ll include some ology jokes,” she says, referring to her famous advert for BT in the eighties. “I’ve got to be a believable character for the kids and it has to work for the grownups, some of whom will have been watching me now for 52 years.”

Despite her experience, she admits to some apprehension. She still gets first night nerves. “I hate first nights. I remember when I was doing my one woman show, I was standing behind the curtain and the band struck up. It’s a horrible feeling. I thought I will never do another first night again. Then I just said yes to the next thing I was offered. But at the time I meant it. As you get older, you have more wisdom and less confidence.”

Before she goes on stage, she still does her exercises taught by LAMDA. And then a mantra, which she has a superstitious belief in: Maureen gives me a demonstration of this impossible tongue twister, which, on the night, she does in the character she will play.

As to what’s next, Maureen will be back on Coronation Street in January. “I’ve got a special sort of storyline,” is all she’ll say.

Then there’s the possibility of a gap year at some point. “David and I have talked about doing things we’ve never done before but I’m also aware that I’m a grandmother and that I need to spend as much time as I can with those two kids because very soon they become big people. Maybe I will slow down next year.”

Looking back on her diverse career, I ask about her favourite roles and if there is anything she is still itching to play. Her favourite part was her portrayal of Joyce Grenfell. “That suited me because it was a stretch away from myself but it was also playing lots of characters and that’s what I like doing best. I’m just basically a mimic.

“I would have liked to have done more classical theatre. I have been offered all sorts but I think new work excites me much more than trying to do something that’s already been done definitively. For me it is the thrill of a new play, a new writer or something that’s current. Then maybe a TV series? I’ve done sitcoms, guest appearances and TV plays but not a series because I’m not a TV detective, am I? I mean who gives a toss who did it? A lot of the stuff on TV is actually about dragging naked women out of ditches and I’m not interested. So, there may be a series but it’s not been written yet…”

Maureen is also a writer. Might she pen something herself? She doesn’t rule it out. “I have written for radio and I enjoyed it,” she says. Maureen may be talking about her age and gap years but it sounds like there’s plenty she still wants to do.

Beauty and the Beast, Richmond Theatre, 7 Dec 2024 –  5 Jan 2025