'There will be orgasms in the aisles!' Cush Jumbo meets Anne-Marie Duff
Cush Jumbo and Anne-Marie Duff had been fans of each other’s work for years before they became friends when they starred in Common at the National Theatre in 2017. They were both preparing to take on major stage roles when the pandemic hit last year. The pair caught up to talk about why theatre is like church and how Covid will change the plays that audiences want.
Anne-Marie Duff: After my first job in acting I believed everybody would be best friends for ever. We’d all become so close. You realise quite quickly that it’s like lots of passionate love affairs. Along the way you collect people and they stay with you. You might not see each other properly for five or six years then you’re back in rehearsals together and it’s as if you never left. That’s the nature of actors – they’re generally very open, funny and forgiving people.
Cush Jumbo: My first professional show was Cinderella in Lewisham with Cheryl Baker and Tessa Sanderson, the javelin thrower. Bodger and Badger were in it. I was 11 and flying high! My mum says I cried for days after it ended. Acting draws different people from different backgrounds, yet when we’re in a group together everyone seems to be able to build these relationships very fast. I once talked to a counsellor about theatre and she said actors don’t give themselves enough credit for the fact they go through a relationship each time – sometimes it’s intense, sometimes a fling, but you give away a bit of yourself each time.
AD: You have to be someone’s wife, daughter, mother, enemy. That energy is charged between you and the other actors and then it’s snipped.
Chris Wiegand: Tell me about your love affairs with theatres.
AD: The place I’ve worked most is the National. I remember when we were doing Common there, it was hard. That play was a brilliant beast. There’s something extraordinary about that building. There’s a heat, an energy, a need to tell tales. When we did Saint Joan in the Olivier theatre in 2007 it was perfect because it was like being in a cathedral.
CJ: The Olivier is much cosier than you’d imagine, especially if you end up connecting with the space. Once you understand what you’re thinking and feeling and saying, it’s like something clicks and the space almost comes into you. I did three plays over 10 years at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and
I changed as an actor there. They are both places that make you tingle. I went into the Young Vic during the first lockdown and I broke down – just from the smell as I went through the stage door. It was overwhelming how sad the building was.
AD: Empty theatres are like lungs without breath. Both Cush and I were supposed to be doing plays during the period where it first went quiet. Many of our colleagues are struggling beyond belief, emotionally as well as economically. Rufus Norris told me someone came to rehearse for the pantomime at the National and he saw them afterwards looking upset. The actor told him: “I just remembered I was good at something.”
CJ: Theatres are churches. It doesn’t matter if they’re new or old buildings. Most people don’t do these jobs to make money – you’d be stupid to be doing this to make money. That’s not why we do it. When they shut the actual churches I understood what that was like for people. Do a service over Zoom? No. Streaming theatre, although it’s brilliant, is not the same thing. Churches need to be filled with people who believe. That’s how the magic works.
AD: The temperature isn’t changed by an actor saying “I love you” or “Once more unto the breach”. The temperature is changed by someone laughing or weeping in the audience.
CW: How far had you got with the productions that were postponed?
AD: I was just about to go into rehearsals for The House of Shades at the Almeida. It’s a brilliant play by Beth Steel. I suspect I had done nowhere near the amount of prep that Cush had