A RIGHT KNEES UP...
TRACY-ANN OBERMAN IS RELISHING PLAYINGNG CAMILLA AS THE WINDSORS GO FROM TV TO PANTO. BY
IT MAY not be Christmas, but now theatre is back in action again, audiences surely deserve the fun of a good panto – and gratifyingly, one has hit the West End in the form of The Windsors: Endgame. A spin-off from the Channel 4 series, the topical farce depicts the royal family in the most outrageous fashion possible, with a plot that sees Charles ascend to the throne and him and a villainous Camilla, played by TracyAnn Oberman, return Britain to being a feudal society.
Suffice to say, in playing Camilla, Tracy-Ann is not exactly aiming for naturalism – ‘part Spitting Image, part panto, part Dallas’ is her description of the show. But where The Crown has got into trouble for playing fast and loose with royal history, Tracy-Ann thinks The Windsors is much less likely to upset anyone, because it’s evidently ‘stupid and silly and satirical’. Indeed, unlikely though it may be that Camilla will pay the show a visit, Tracy-Ann thinks she would have a good time if she did. ‘I think she would love it. She’s obviously got a very good sense of humour and I like her a lot,’ she says.
An actress of particular versatility, equally adept at high comedy and high drama, Tracy-Ann knew she wanted to perform from a young age, although her hard-working, Jewish immigrant family were not overly impressed by her ambitions. ‘The last thing [they wanted to hear me saying] was “I want to be an actress”, particularly because we didn’t know anybody in the industry.
‘I remember my Dad always saying, “If you insist on being an actress, Tracy, prepare yourself to spend the rest of your life in a studio flat with a cat.” Every day I’m not doing that, I feel like I’m winning at life,’ she laughs.
It was in 2004 when she achieved household name status after landing the role of Dirty Den’s wife, Chrissie Watts, in EastEnders. In her two-year stint, she was involved in one of the BBC TV soap’s highest-profile plotlines ever when she killed her dastardly husband with a doorstop. It led to a media frenzy, the scale of which couldn’t quite be imagined today, she says. ‘This was before reality TV had taken over [from soaps] in generating that kind of tabloid [interest].
‘I was old enough to be able to handle [the attention] and also I have a lot of friends who are journalists, so I kind of got the game. But I felt sorry for a lot of the younger [EastEnders stars] because I think it was a hard world to navigate if you didn’t understand the rules of engagement.’ Since that star-making moment, she has had a prolific and varied career including writing as well as acting. Over the last 18 months, for example, despite Covid restrictions, her latest radio play has premiered on Radio 4, and she has been in YouTube comedy series Dun Breedin’, with actress mates including Julie Graham and Tamzin Outhwaite. Tracy-Ann also filmed a key role in upcoming BBC1 thriller Ridley Road, which tells the story of a Jewish hairdresser who goes undercover in a neo-Nazi organisation in 1960s London.
In addressing anti-Semitism in the UK, the latter is a particular passion project for her. She knows all too well about the subject matter, having used her platform to speak out against it over the last few years. She says that in speaking out, ‘I think I took a big gamble with my career. A lot of people in my industry at the beginning said to me, “I totally agree with you, but I wouldn’t have the guts to do that because I’d be scared of the impact.” But actually the impact it’s had has been nothing but positive, because I do think courage calls to courage everywhere.’
She has had to contend with online abuse as a result, which has been all the worse because she is a woman, she says. ‘A lot of trolling happens to women, because [the trolls] think women won’t fight back. I hope that by standing strong,
I’ve shown you can be resilient and taken a lot of women with me.’
In fact, she will be channelling her experiences of both anti-Semitism and misogyny into a new take on Shakespeare’s
The Merchant Of
Venice, in which she will play Shylock as a female Jewish matriarch living in the
East End in the 1930s. PreCovid, the production had been scheduled to tour last autumn, but Tracy-Ann says it looks like it is back on track to have a run next year. Before she moves back to more serious theatre, though, she’s determined to enjoy every ludicrous minute of her current engagement.
‘If this period has taught us anything, it’s that we’ve got to try and find the joy where we can and I think The Windsors: Endgame is a really joyous piece of theatre where you can come in and switch off for an hour-and-a-half, and go home and feel like you’ve escaped into something very funny and sweet and warm-hearted.’
‘I think Camilla would love it. She’s obviously got a great sense of humour’
The Windsors: Endgame Until Oct 9, Prince of Wales Theatre, London, princeofwalestheatre.co.uk