Chewin’ The Fat actress reveals shock as critics hail stage roles
It might be from Chewin’ The Fat, the sketch show which introduced Still Game creators Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill to the world.
Maybe it’s from the characters she created for The Karen Dunbar Show, her turn welcoming the world to Glasgow in the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games or from stage appearances in pantos such as Aladdin or musicals like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
It’s unlikely to be as an acclaimed Shakespearean actress but the 46-year-old Ayrshire performer has discovered a late blooming and wholly unexpected new career path.
Karen has won critical praise in London and New York for her performances in director Phyllida Lloyd’s trilogy of all- female productions of Henry IV, The Tempest and Julius Caesar.
Julius Caesar is being released as a movie and had its premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which Karen attended.
She’s as surprised as anyone by the direction her career has taken.
“I’m in a Shakespeare play. I’m in a Shakespeare film,” she says, eyes wide with mock surprise.
“I have done loads of stuff but I don’t know what they saw. I’ve never done Shakespeare in my life. I’m not trained at all, I’ve not been to acting school. I’m a karaoke host – that’s how I started off.
“It’s been a mixture of luck and hard work. I enjoy working hard and I enjoy working hard at something I believe in and I have been fortunate I have had the chance too do that.
“When I watched Juliuslius Caesar the other night, I thought,ought, ‘ If I don’t do anythingng more than this, that’st’s enough.’”
She’s not talking aboutout packing it in. She’s still got a mortgage to pay, as she pointsoints out, but Shakespearee has pushed her and openeded her mind to new possibilities.es.
And she has had helpp from Scotland’s own nationalal bard, Robert Burns. Her familiaritymiliarity with the rhythm of his words has helped her slip into Shakespeare.kespeare.
Karen said: “I’m a rhythmic learner. If I am trying to learn lines, I have a beat to them. And,nd, if I miss a beat out, I have to go back. Burns is fantastic for that and Shakespeare’s the same.
“When you hear ‘Shakespeare’ and you are not familiar with it, you kind of roll your eyes and think ‘ thee and thou’ butt it’sits no coincidence that,hat, 500 years on, it’s stillll being performed all overver the world because it’s brilliant. I have been a bit more open-minded to it thanks to Burns because I don’t have much education – three O grades and I scraped by them.” She bears her school, Ayr Academy, no ill will. In factfact, she was back the other wweek to see it before it shut down and relocated to a new site. But if she didn’t connect academically, a she never n had any doubt d about where she was going. Karen saidsaid: “I had an Enid BlytonBlyto diary and, when I was 12, I wrote in the bacback of it, ‘ To whom it may concern, I KaKaren Deborah Dunbar will be on teletelevision – look out world, here I comcome! A star is born.’ “Now we were pretty poor. My dadad had retired, my mum was a clcleaner but something in me kknew that was what I was going tto do. I had no training, I had no way in – I just knew. “It’s the right time and right place but it’s also the right attitude. I had oodles of chutzpah. At the time I was like, ‘ You want me. You. Want. Me.’”
That attitude is on display in Julius Caesar. The film and play are set in a women’s prison and it was shot at London’s Donmar Warehouse.
The premise is that the prisoners are staging the play so she has to prepare an inmate who has to perform Shakespeare.
It opens with the audience on all sides and the cast, led by Harriet Walter, entering like they are going into a boxing ring. It gave the whole production an edge, which is exactly what was intended.
Karen said: “The Donmar is a wee theatre, a bit like The Tron in Glasgow, but of course it is in theatreland and, instead of bringing the audience in the front door, with the lovely vestibule and curtains and expensive coffee, they shut it all down and took people through the fire exit at the back.
“The front of house people were dressed as guards so it seemed like they were in a prison. They were a wee bit scared.”
Karen and the cast were in New York at the same time as the inauguration of Donald Trump. It gave Julius Caesar, about a political leader whose quest for personal power threatens the constitution, an obvious relevance.
She said: “We were staying near Wall Street and the security was massive. It did feed the play as being utterly relevant and vital.”
The all-female nature of Donmar’s Shakespeare trilogy was designed to give female actors access to roles they would not otherwise have been able to play, which has rankled with some. But for Karen, who has been involved since 2014, her own experience as a woman in the arts has been positive.
She said: “I don’t know what this makes me and I don’t care but I have never felt, ‘ That’s not fair, the boys are doing this and that.’
“I never had that on Chewin’ The Fat or The Karen Dunbar Show. I have always felt equal, supported.”
She has also had the support of her wife Linda, who she married last year, as she travels from their home in Glasgow to London and New York.
Her other half also keeps her feet very much on the ground, especially when it comes to Shakespeare.
She added: “She hates Shakespeare. Well, she doesn’t hate it but she’s a psychotherapist – she deals with real life. Not that Shakespeare doesn’t but she is in at the nitty gritty of stuff and I am like, ‘Forsooth!’” Julius Caesar is released in cinemas across the UK on July 12.
I don’t know what they saw in me. I’ve never been to acting school