Curry and culture are on Lenska’s best bucket list
When Coronation Street actress Rula Lenska arrives in Christchurch next week, she’ll have three things on her mind: preparing to take to the stage of the James Hay Theatre, booking a wildlife tour for her one day off in the city, and finding some great Indian restaurants for a post-show cast curry.
There is, however, a fourth item on Lenska’s Christchurch bucket list – meeting members of the city’s Polish Association.
Despite being born in the UK, the actress is the daughter of Polish aristocracy – her family fled Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
“My mother had a really devastating, ghastly war,” she reflects. “They came over as penniless refugees to England. But they all survived. My mother survived a concentration camp, as did her mother, amazingly.”
Lenska attended an English school – “but we also had to go to Polish school on Saturdays. And I once apparently said to my mother at the age of about 7, ‘It's just my luck to be born a Pole and a Catholic – it ruins my whole weekend!’.”
Despite wanting to fit in with her England friends, Lenska’s parents insisted on a Polish way of life.
“Once one crossed that threshold into the house, we weren't allowed to speak English. We had to speak Polish. And we still follow all the Polish traditions like birthdays, name days, Christmas and Easter. And as does my daughter and, hopefully, my grandson will do as well.”
It’s an inheritance that Lenska has learned to cherish, as demonstrated on a recent episode of Our DNA Journey with her Coro co-star Maureen Lipman, which was shown on TV3.
“I feel very Polish in my core, in my heart,” she says. “I'm eternally grateful to the UK for taking my family in, but my heart is in Poland.”
It’s an identity that has captured the attention of Ōtautahi’s Polish Association – Polonia Christchurch.
Members will be supporting Lenska after snapping up tickets for her show, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and are also planning to meet her to explain the historical links Poland has with the city.
It was a very different Christchurch that Lenska meandered through in 1984 with her then-husband Dennis Waterman.
The actress’s turbulent marriage to the Minder and New Tricks star has been the stuff of decades-long media fodder. Waterman – who Lenska still cites as the love of her life – could be violent when he’d had a drink. Years after she publicly accused him of domestic abuse, his tone-deaf admission on Piers Morgan’s TV show Life Stories enraged family violence campaigners, although the actress revealed to a friend that she was relieved he had finally admitted to beating her.
She also recognises her time with Waterman as a “huge part” of her life.
“It’s an era of my life that is passed. Most of it was wonderful, but the end was horrible, really horrible.
“And, sadly, he died a couple of years ago. I always thought that we would have some form of closure, but it never happened.”
Despite the inevitable echoes of her last visit to Christchurch, Lenska does hope to repeat some of the “blissful” sightseeing the couple enjoyed 40 years ago.
South Island trips back then included a visit to Aoraki/Mt Cook, and the actress will try to squeeze in a nature tour or two during the show’s Ōtautahi run.
It will need to be “stuff that one can do in one day, because we only get one day off per week. So it’s a question of working out what’s possible. I will do as much as I possibly can!”
After touring The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in the UK, Lenska is working with an almost completely new cast of Kiwi actors for the New Zealand run, including Annie Ruth and Kate JasonSmith.
The play’s Christchurch run is at The James Hay Theatre from Wednesday, May 15, to Sunday, May 19.
Lenska believes it’s the kind of show that “brings people together”.
Based on the Sunday Times bestseller that went on to inspire a hit film, the play is described as “a journey to India with an eclectic group of British retirees as they embark on a new life”.
Lenska describes her role – as cougar gold-digger Madge Hardcastle – as a “delicious part to play, although it’s not the largest of the female roles, but she certainly has the best laugh lines ... And she’s daring and adventurous, and quite open about the fact that she’s coming over here to try and find another man.”
“I really hope that the Kiwis will take it to their heart,” she adds, “because people used to say in England that it leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling.”
Regular post-show visits to Indian restaurants became a cast tradition during the UK run, and Lenska is hoping to emulate that practice in Christchurch.
“However, one has to be a bit sensible, obviously, about not staying up too late and partying and drinking,” the veteran actress accepts.
Her decades of theatrical experience helped with her stamina levels when she took on the role of Claudia Colby in Coronation Street.
The soap opera’s gruelling workload has taken its toll on many a younger actor, but Lenska rose to the “honour and the privilege” of being cast in the show. However, “it’s a very fast turnover”, she says.
“There's no rehearsals or anything like that. You just have to get in there and know your lines – and don’t bump into the furniture.”
In true Coro style, there may be a dramatic twist to Lenska’s Polish links with Christchurch.
“The other extraordinary coincidence is that my father’s first job was for a company called The Polish American Immigration Relief Committee.
“And he looked after refugees from all behind the Iron Curtain, uniting them with their families, housing them – and an awful lot [of those] in his care came to New Zealand and to Australia.”
No stranger to a soap opera cliffhanger, the perpetually adventurous actress is determined to find out more from her new Polish friends in Ōtautahi.