Dream Role
SHELLEY MARSDEN speaks to Rocky Horror actress Pat Quinn about her new play... - 03/12/08
Prancing across the stage at Jermyn Street Theatre and looking like a leprechaun that’s got lost on its way home from a piping convention (she’s wearing a tartan two-piece and carrying a stick), Patricia Quinn doesn’t look bad for her 64-year years.
In her latest play, the distinctive red-haired Belfast actress, famous for her role as Magenta in the original Rocky Horror Show (she was ‘the Lips’ at the beginning of the film) plays Antrim fairy Brooklechaun, who has a problem with spell-casting and Gaelic and an accent that sounds disturbingly like Ian Paisley’s.
Quinn has lived in London for years, but I am still surprised when I catch up with her post-rehearsal and there is no hint of a Belfast accent. Nothing. Indeed, the velvet, langorous voice that greets me sounds more like Cruella De Vil in the Disney film. The more we speak (she talkative, slightly distracted, with a throaty, mischevious laugh and a tendency towards the dramatic flourish) the more I think she could be a perfect Cruella – but without the cruel streak, of course.
‘The Dreamers of Inishdara’, directed by Dublin playwright Peter Dunne, an old friend of Quinn’s, is a ‘pre-credit crunch’ romantic comedy set in Connemara, on a headland which becomes an island at high tide. It tells the story of Leanah Dubh, a half-human, half-fairy girl who can “crack a man's skull at half a mile with a hurling ball”.
“It’s an enchanting play, to do with greed and materialism, with the Euro
coming in and Ireland’s new-found affluence”, says Quinn. The fairies of the land have decided that intervention is needed; enchantment is leaving the hearts of mortal men and delight in life needs to be brought back.
“It’s actually pretty sexy!” giggles Quinn, “but in a delightful, purely romantic way. People have forgotten what romance is! There’s a light in your heart watching this, and that’s why I’m in it. People love it. It’s very, very funny – one can’t do it for laughing.”
Quinn actually plays another minor role in the play, and it’s keeping her on her feet. She says; “Holy Joe is more in the guise of Michael MacLiammoir, or a Patrick McGee, so it’s much more measured. I’m having great fun. Then the cast is fantastic. At the beginning you think, why doesn’t he or she buck up, and then suddenly they’ve passed you at the post!”
Quinn may be best remembered as Magenta, but she began her career in London, believe it or not, as a Playboy Bunny. Since then, she has been in a whole host of films and plays across the years, some memorable, such as I, Claudius (1976), Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983) and TV’s Fortunes of War (1987) a few less so, like The Rocky Horror sequel flop, Shock Treatment (1981).
The actress met her late husband Robert Stephens (who was previously married to Dame Maggie Smith) on stage in Peter Schaffer’s play ‘Murderer’, getting great delight from telling me that she “always tended to go for my leading men…. which could prove very tricky at times. As we say in acting, ‘it doesn’t count on tour’ and if you want a divorce, go to Stratford…”
It is obvious, however that Rocky Horror remains Quinn’s proudest moment – and why shouldn’t it be? Richard O’Brien’s 1975 low-budget musical film, a parody of science fiction and horror genres, has become a worldwide cult classic, spawning new generations of fans and ever weirder conventions each year.
Quinn, laughing, says even if she tried to forget it, people are always reminding her. Only last year Rocky Horror won a poll vote as the best thing to come out of the Royal Court theatre (where it was first performed) in 50 years. No mean feat, as that puts it in the public’s eyes above plays by Beckett, Christopher Hampton, Tom Stoppard – the whole lot of them.
For the full interview see this week's Irish World. - or buy the digital version online!
The Dreamers of Inishdara is at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London until Sat 13 Dec. Box Office: 0207 287 2875, www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/
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