Why Carey’s the Woman of the hour
Carey Mulligan is going solo on stage, playing a go-getting mother of two. and she’s terrified.
The Oscar-nominated, Bafta-winning actress will star in Matilda The Musical writer Dennis Kelly’s new drama, girls & Boys, which lyndsey Turner will direct at the royal Court Theatre in london from February 8.
Carey, who herself has two children with husband Marcus Mumford, told me she was captivated by Kelly’s play about a woman (her character is referred to simply as ‘Woman’) who meets her future husband at an airport.
They settle down, buy a house and juggle careers. ‘They are an ordinary family,’ the 32-year-old said, as she spoke to me on the phone yesterday from los angeles. ‘ Then their world starts to unravel, and events take a disturbing turn.’
Carey is on the West Coast to promote Mudbound: an extraordinary Depression- era film in which she gives a heartbreaking performance. The picture, which is released here next Friday, will open the annual film market in la. Carey will also attend the academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences governors awards in Beverly Hills tomorrow.
She said she’s excited to be returning to the royal Court, where she played nina in ian rickson’s production of The Seagull a decade ago. She saw Jez Butterworth’s Ferryman when it opened there in april, and said she had the urge to be up there on stage with the cast. So when she was sent Boys & girls ‘i just couldn’t walk away from it — as much as i’m terrified. ‘i was really daunted by the onewoman show aspect of it all. But as my agent, Tor Belfrage, said: “if it’s not scary, it’s not worth doing.” ’ Carey observed that while there are ‘ disturbing elements’ in the piece, it’s also ‘witty and funny’. She said she rarely reads scripts and laughs out loud, but she did with this one. She added that despite the generic name, Woman is a fully rounded character; and the play captures ‘a whole life’. Carey said she saw Fiona Shaw and Vanessa redgrave act in one- woman pieces, and particularly remembers watching the late Pete Postlethwaite, when she was a teenager, in Scaramouche Jones. ‘He played a clown on the last night of his life; playing several characters as he looked back on his life,’ she recalled. ‘When he came out on his own at the end, i looked for the other cast members because he made those characters feel so real.’