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‘Playing a baddie isn’t so bad at all’
Karen Dunbar on her latest role and being a rapper
SINCE stepping onto the karaoke bar stage 31 years ago, Karen Dunbar has been making people laugh more than a list of pre-election promises. The comedy actor has been making audiences love her with performances on TV’s Chewin’ the Fat, The Karen Dunbar Show and on stage as a stand-up and a panto star.
But now, rather unusually, the Ayrshire-born actor isn’t expecting to be assaulted with audience warmth at all. In her new online film role in Distance Remaining, which focuses on the dramatically changed circumstances in the Covid-stricken lives of three characters, Dunbar plays Lindsey, a woman whose moral sat nav has gone on the blink.
“We learn that Lindsey was sort of mid-management before Covid struck,” she explains. “The film is set at the time of the highest spike of Covid deaths in Britain. Lindsey has been furloughed,
and is three weeks into lockdown. So she takes on the job of delivering food parcels to those who are shielding.”
So far, so Mother Teresa. However, we learn that Lindsey is not a saintly white van driver at all. “A lot of what she’s doing is being seen to be doing something worthy.”
Virtue signalling? “Exactly. She’s on social media a lot and looking for likes. She simply has to post the story of what she’s been doing to the world.
“I like the piece,” she says of Stewart Melton’s story of three characters’ attempts to reconnect to society. “It’s really well written and quite near the knuckle, which is what you want. And without spoiling it, the audience won’t be sure if Lindsey is going to be completely sucked into the vortex of approval from strangers or if she’s going to reconnect with herself.
“But hopefully I’ve managed to make her just likeable enough that you are rooting for her.”
Did Dunbar drool at the idea of playing such a morally ambiguous character? After all, actors want to be loved. Her last two stage roles saw her play God in the Still Game Hydro show, and she starred in the laughs guarantee that is Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, playing the indomitable Lady Bracknell.
Wouldn’t she rather have returned to playing someone who’s a little warmer? “Well, hopefully the audiences will see that it’s Lindsey and not me who is less than loveable,” she says, laughing. “But I know what you mean. You often wonder what sort of reaction you’ll get.
“I remember during one panto year (the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 2008) I played the Wicked Stepmother – as well as the Good Fairy – and at first I was reticent to be bad. But I had no idea how much I would enjoy the buzz of the boos. It was like a wall of noise coming at me. And it was so incredible to be in charge of that.”
She smiles and says: “Being a baddie is not so bad at all.” Ah, but this is a real baddie, as opposed to a caricatured panto baddie? “That’s true,” she laughs.
In fact, Dunbar has stepped aside from comedy several times in her career. She has tackled, for example, the likes of Denise Mina’s monologue A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle and has performed Shakespeare in Glasgow and London. And, of course, who would turn down an acting role at the moment in a production with a script that perfectly captures the zeitgeist?
Dunbar has been busy throughout lockdown. The performer, who has worked as a stand-up comedian, panto star, Burns Night speaker and TV actor, reveals she has become a rap star.
For the past six months, she has been hosting online workshops working with community groups, helping to develop rap stanzas. “The only reason I created the workshops was out of the necessity to do something,” she says not surprisingly, given her natural animation. “It’s been able to connect me creatively and I’d be happy to do more of that. Right now, I’m booked to continue the rap workshops until the end of June.”
Has she suffered mentally during lockdown? “Strangely enough, the rap workshop has made all the difference to me. That’s been a huge help in terms of motivation and discipline. But my mantra has been ‘pals and exercise’. I love to talk and walk and I’ve been cycling round about the Clyde. That’s also helped give me a focus.”
Where does Dunbar see her career direction? And is there a danger that her ubiquity – she has DJ’d in New York, starred in Calendar Girls and opened the 2014 Commonwealth Games – could sometimes count against her?
“I suppose you’d need to ask those who would be saying that,” she says. “What I do is look at each individual experience and see what the feedback is, whether audiences were positive. And of course, I’ve never had a career plan. It’s always been about taking it as it comes.”
She thinks for a moment. “What I do know now is that I would really love the chance to get in a room with people. I feel there’s a real sense of community in a theatre and people are desperate for that shared energy and experience.”
Dunbar can write. She can perform. She could go away and write another play, such as her Oran Mor success #71? That itch is particularly prevalent in these restrictive times. Dunbar understands entirely why people have had to learn new skills, or perhaps reinvent themselves, either by losing weight, baking banana bread or putting something back into the community.
“You can understand it,” she says in soft voice. “If we’re talking about existentialist crises, that is certainly the case with this woman I play in the film.”
DISTANCE Remaining also features pensioner Jess (Dolina MacLennan), making an epic journey across her living room floor, and teenager Cam (Reuben Joseph) finally looking up from his phone at the world around him.
Director Caitlin Skinner says Dunbar’s casting was a no-brainer. “We approached Karen as we wanted all three plays in Distance Remaining to be centred on the actors’ performance and to allow the audience to spend time enjoying those performances – as you can in a theatre. I knew how engaging and, of course, funny Karen is but when we met her and she responded to the play it was instantly clear she was going to be the right person.”
Dunbar is not a trained actor but an instinctive performer who is happy to have a career whose twists and turns may emerge from necessity – or an active imagination.
“I’ve never seen myself as any specific thing, other than entertainer,” she agrees. “Whatever falls to me on that day is what I’ll turn my hand to.”
There’s a thought. Why doesn’t she play the lead in The Entertainer? John Osborne’s 1950s story of a clapped-out music hall star, Archie Rice, mirrored a Britain in decline after the Suez crisis. It’s still relevant, still speaks to a Covidbroken Britain that needs to be rebuilt. And wouldn’t it be great to see Dunbar crash this classic male zone? It’s also fairly certain that as a stand-up she could convince more than the great Laurence Olivier, who played the role in the West End and on film, despite not having one comedic bone in his body.
“It could work,” she says, smiling at the suggestion, but in a far less than convinced voice. And that makes sense. Perhaps she’s not immediately attracted by the idea of playing a not very good end-of-the-pier performer. “I will get through what I’m doing at the moment and have a good look at that.”
It could be great, I suggest. And you have the acting skills to play a struggling performer. And you’re now 50 (she was born on April 1), the same age as Olivier when he appeared on the West End stage. It’s perfect for you.
She laughs, saying nothing, a sure indication that she thinks lockdown has stolen my sanity.
Distance Remaining runs from April 14 to May 9. For tickets and information visit distanceremaining.com
I never had a career plan. It’s always been about taking it as it comes