To camera

Tamsin Greig speaks to James Rampton about the challenge and thrill of taking on one of Alan Bennett’s famed monologues in the revived Talking Heads series for the BBC

Tamsin Greig on appearing in Alan Bennett’s rebooted Talking Heads

There’s so much noise and bluster in our lives, we generally don’t give space to that quieter voice that says: ‘And there was a chip in the sugar’,” says Tamsin Greig. “We don’t notice those little details because they seem so insignificant in the showboating of our normal lives.”

That is why, she thinks, this period of uncertainty and loneliness has been the perfect time to revive Alan Bennett’s exquisitely crafted series of monologues, Talking Heads. “They reflect what many people are going through at the moment. People may well think: ‘That’s the last thing I want to watch. Because my experience has been so profoundly lonely, I don’t want to sit and watch other people being lonely!’ But what these monologues do is investigate the interior world of people who are unheard. They are tiny, quiet explosions in suburbia.”

Another reason the series feels so resonant? “Apparently a lot of people are now talking to themselves out loud. We are realising just how much in our daily lives we need to connect and be heard.”

In the season of 12 monologues – which features two entirely new dramas, The Shrine (performed by Monica Dolan) and An Ordinary Woman (Sarah Lancashire) – we have dramas starring the likes of Jodie Comer, Imelda Staunton, Harriet Walter and Martin Freeman. Greig stars in Nights in the Gardens of Spain, originally performed by Penelope Wilton in 1998. It is a beautifully nuanced drama delivered direct to camera by Rosemary Horrocks, a lonely and neglected suburban wife whose standard-issue outfit is a drab grey cardigan and beige shirt.

She is compelled to reassess every aspect of her life after her neighbour murders her husband. When Rosemary goes round to see her neighbour in the immediate aftermath of the killing, she immediately notices the blood on the rug in the sitting room. “It was awful,” she recalls, “because the first thing I thought was: ‘Well, she’ll never get that out’.”

Greig gives an affecting performance as a woman who embodies that line from Pink Floyd’s Time: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.”

Nights in the Gardens of Spain was produced in a strictly socially distanced way. This presented 53-year-old Greig with numerous new hurdles, including doing her own hair and make-up for the first time.

“I got my daughter up at 5:30 on the days we were filming, and she did my make-up for me,” she says (Greig lives in London with her husband, the actor Richard Leaf, and their three children). “Then in the studio I had to colour my own hair with spray. The make-up designer laid out various products for me in front of the mirror. In between takes, she would say: ‘OK, pick up that product and that brush and do this.’ That was quite nerve-wracking. Interestingly, the loneliness of that process mirrored Rosemary’s story.”

The actual filming of Nights in the Gardens of Spain, on existing Eastenders sets at Elstree Studios, proved equally demanding. Shooting single takes of up to seven-and-ahalf minutes was “like playing Jenga. Once you start a scene, that’s it. There is no stopping. You’re constantly battling, trying to remember the words and silence that idiot of a voice in your head that is going: ‘Look at you!’ – which makes you instantly forget everything! So if I look more and more panicky towards the end of every scene, it’s just because I’m trying to silence that inner voice that is going: ‘You big arsehole!’”

The scariest part of the job for her, though, comes as a surprise. “After ordering all my costumes off the internet, I had to iron them all! I realised then just how much art goes into preparing clothes that look great on camera. They are a little universe of narrative. Since I’ve had a family, one of my great sacrifices is that I don’t iron any more. In fact, when one of my children was in the play corner at primary school, his teacher asked the class about various items you might see in the home. She held up a play iron, and he had no idea what it was.” A pause. “A part of me is quite proud of that.”

When it was first broadcast in 1988 and 1998, Talking Heads won two Baftas. These monologues are now regarded as modern classics, and have featured on A-level English Literature syllabuses. Why have they endured? According to Greig, “Alan is interested in voices that are marginalised. He brings those characters who have been voiceless centre stage. He has a real willingness to spend time with the unabsorbed. That’s what all these people in Talking Heads are. They are those

“Apparently a lot of people are now talking to themselves out loud. We are realising just how much in our daily lives we need to connect and be heard”

people who linger on the outskirts of a party who often get overlooked and are not absorbed into the larger conversation. Alan has incredible antennae and picks up the quieter conversations happening right on the edge, which are often those full of the greatest flavour.

“I wonder how many more of those conversations are happening now because we don’t have all those big distractions,” she muses. “We so often say: ‘God save us from boredom’. But we are doing ourselves a disservice because it’s in the ordinariness of our lives that we meet something rather wonderful. These dramas highlight our commonplace-ness, our day-today-ness. We are so afraid of being bored, but actually once we have got past that judgement, we can see the potential for wonder in things that might at first appear boring.”

Greig is one of our best-loved performers, and has shone in everything from Black Books, Friday Night Dinner and Episodes to Green Wing, Belgravia and The Archers.

Her acclaimed performance as Malvolio in the National’s 2017 production of Twelfth Night was recently reshown as part of the National Theatre at Home series, which has proven, like Talking Heads, another antidote to loneliness in lockdown.

Almost always – that Malvolio performance an exception – she has shone portraying ordinary women, women who are easy to relate to.

If she altered her face, for example with Botox, she thinks it would “dishonour” those women.

“It’s about engaging with one’s own authenticity, which is a difficult thing for anybody to do. Our interest in things not changing has become an obsession. We fall into the trap of aspic.” She points to her co-stars in Talking Heads as proof that ageism need not be an issue any more in acting. “In the past, people might have said of them: ‘Oh, they have reached that age now.’ And yet here they are doing beautiful work.”

Still, Greig is extremely concerned that the acting profession is under serious threat as a result of the pandemic. “Most of the industry is on its knees, and we could be looking at its potential demise if proper investment is not forthcoming.

“Something about the live-ness of performance is invaluable.

I’ve always banged on about the essential nature of participating in and witnessing a creative act. Something intangible changes in us on a biological level at that moment. I don’t want to get to that place where we realise it has died. Then it would be too late to make the heart start again.” ■

The full series of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads is available to watch now on iplayer