A play making its debut at Live Theatre next week brings Melanie Hill back to the North East and, the actress tells BARBARA HODGSON, it’s good to be home
SHE may have been living in London for the past 30 years but Sunderland-born actress Melanie Hill still calls the North East home. Which is why she’s delighted to be back in the region in new play Nativities which launches at Live Theatre next Tuesday.
I caught up with Hill yesterday at the theatre on Newcastle Quayside, fresh out of morning rehearsals for what’s described as a darkly comic story. Set against a backdrop of petty office politics it will no doubt strike a chord with many in the audience.
Hill moved to London from her native Sunderland – “a massive culture shock” – at the age of 19 to attend RADA, after encouragement from her drama teacher.
The teacher spotted her potential in their Monkwearmouth school productions of The Crucible and Blood Wedding.
She’s since covered the spectrum of TV, film and stage but, says Hill, whose mother still lives in Sunderland and sister in Gosforth, Newcastle, she always keeps an eye out for a chance to work in the North.
In the wake of roles in locally-made film United, wartime drama Joe Maddison’s War and Mike Packer’s play Inheritance, also at Live, Nativities has brought her first chance to work with the theatre’s artistic director Max Roberts.
“Inheritance was a great piece and when Max asked me to come back and do this, I was thrilled,” she says.
“Just to be in this building is a privilege. There’s always something going on, something happening in every room, and the theatre is very supportive of young writers.”
The play’s author would agree. In line with Live’s policy of encouraging visiting drama as well as honing local new writing talent, it commissioned Zoe Cooper, a recent English graduate and up-and-coming playwright from the capital, who’d impressed the team during last year’s new writing festival Different Stages.
Nativities is Cooper’s first full-length play and with Max Roberts at the helm, the combination of raw ingredients and expertise bodes well.
The story is set in the horribly corporate- sounding Scion Communications, a call centre where new girl Stella is settling into her role as administrative assistant,
But when she becomes pregnant, the lives of those friendly colleagues are revealed in a new light.
In it, Melanie plays Madge: “She’s the oldest person in the office and considers herself the mother figure.
“She used to be a singer and loved her career but got pregnant and had to give it up.
“She’s quite a sad figure; she’s basically living in the past, which she’s built up to be wonderful but was probably not that wonderful!”
The rest of the office cast is made up of Sam Neale (Stella), Laura Norton, Chris Connel and Paul Woodson, while Phillippa Wilson plays Connel’s wife, a nurse.