The old-school stage star with a Raisin to love modern-day TV
Marcia Warren has been in major dramas but it would be a crime to forget her comedy roles, says David Stephenson
MARCIA Warren is a true legend of stage and screen. It’s not a description normally used nowadays, but this talented, two-time Olivier Award winner has both “trodden the boards” in the heady days of theatre – touring the world with Derek Nimmo and Ian Mckellen – and appeared in TV sitcoms such as No Place Like Home.
Lockdown, however, stalled her busy life – three shows were cancelled immediately – meaning her garden in Richmond-upon-thames received rather more attention than usual. How is she coping?
“I’m actually very well,” she tells me on the phone, “and it is extremely kind of you to do this. And I don’t mind doing an early interview [10am] because I’m up very early dead-heading flowers and killing the blackflies!”
Marcia, a sprightly 76, has a ready wit, which has characterised dozens of screen appearances, combined with deft timing and a comedy tic here and there to make a line work.
“I suppose I do work from home to some extent,” she says. “I learn all my lines here. But two TV series and a film for me have gone down under lockdown. This situation is horrific isn’t it? It’s unimaginable and I don’t know how it’s going to pan out until there’s a vaccine.
“But I hear that Ian Mckellen has started rehearsing Hamlet, if you can believe it. They don’t know when they’re going to open it but they’re going to rehearse. Hamlet doesn’t do much kissing so that’s going to be all right!
“Last time he did Hamlet we toured the world together with it. I think it was about 50 years ago. So perhaps he will remember some of the lines.
“One week we did five countries in five days. When somebody asked me a question on the plane, I replied, “Qui” “Si” “Ya” – I didn’t know which country I was in and which one I was going to!”
People don’t tour like this anymore, she says. “The theatre tours Derek Nimmo managed were all over the Gulf, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I walked on the Great Wall of China and got arrested in Nigeria. I said to our leading actor, William Gaunt, ‘This is out of this world but it’s not a good career move!’”
Why were you arrested? “We’d taken a picture of the chieftain’s mud hut and we shouldn’t have done! But I think they were just after some money.”
Her performances hark back to another era when the content of many plays would now be deemed unacceptable. We discuss how shows such as Fawlty Towers have now been edited to exclude certain words, and Little Britain has been taken off Netflix altogether because characters “black up”.
“I think it is ridiculous,” she says. “I really think it’s gone too far. Completely daft. On Radio 4 Extra, they have all these old comedies that were made in the Fifties and you do wonder at some of the language. I think you realise that it was when they were made but, you know, I think it’s daft.”
Should more old sitcoms be taken off? “I think they should be left alone. If it upsets you, just switch over to another channel.”
Her latest TV gig is Sky’s cosy crime series Agatha Raisin. She says: “Of course, you just don’t know when you start these things that they will do any good, but the costumes and scenery are fantastic and Ashley Jensen is very good as Agatha. They say it’s like Midsomer Murders but with better costumes and funnier.”
BUT, SHE adds: “I play what I call ‘Oxfam parts’, so I can never buy the clothes afterwards. Literally we go into one of those stores and see something that looks ghastly and say, ‘Can we have two of those please?’”
Warren plays Mrs Boggle, the local busybody. “I’ve never met anyone like her really. I’m reminded that in the first episode she was rude, she was crass and she was filthy. But in another episode, one character said, ‘I think Mrs Boggle has had a personality transplant’.
“I think she got very lonely, so had to pull herself together. She now wants to be in everything. Now she’s actually smiling, which is very rare for her. She also wants to be part of the detective agency that Agatha runs so I finally get to be Mrs Marple. That would be good.” She reflects on her many screen appearances, which recently have included Not Going Out, Don’t Forget The Driver, Inside No 9, Sherlock and Midsomer Murders.
Her first screen credit was in 1970. “You mostly have to create a background for these characters. They’re all made up. Sometimes you turn up on set and find that a character suddenly has a son! No one ever tells you much. “When you see the place you live in for the first time, you sometimes think, ‘I will have to change my accent if I live here!’ We always used to have read-throughs in the old days
and a fortnight to rehearse which was glorious, but now it’s a whole different business and I’m very glad I started when I did. I did about 15 years in rep theatre. They can’t do that now.”
The great thing about rep, she says, was the opportunity to play so many different characters. “You could play anything. I stayed at the Bristol Old Vic, on and off, for four years. We had three theatres that we were filling. It’s not like that now, and a month’s rehearsal was so exciting.”
She has won two Laurence Olivier awards for best supporting actress, one in 2002 for
Humble Boy at the National Theatre.
SHE WOULD do stage management, too, in the early days. “I did have one awful moment,” she says. “I was stage manager and it was the first night of Ten Little Indians. I pressed the stand-by button and my assistant thought for some reason that it might mean to bring the curtain up during the interval – only there were three ‘dead bodies’ sitting on the sofa having tea!
“They took one look at the audience and walked off very slowly. That was known as ‘Black Monday at Northampton Rep’ as I recall. The trick was not to become too good as a stage manager or you’d never become an actress.” No Place Like Home, which ran from 1983 to 1987 and featured a very young Martin Clunes, was a great period for her. “Yes, it was, but
I am in the eccentric box as an actress. If a frightening eccentric or weird character comes along, they always think of me.
“It’s good to be in a box. I did think this morning that I’ve also played two serial killers, so it’s balancing out a bit! But you think, ‘What is it about me that makes me either eccentric or a serial killer? I don’t want anyone’s opinion on that at all!” Is there any role she would dearly love to do? “Well, when I heard about Ian Mckellen and his Hamlet, I thought, ‘I’ve always wanted to do Rosalind from As You Like It’. I’ve put it out there now.”
All three series of Agatha Raisin are on DVD and digital with series 2 and 3 available to stream on Acorntv