Lisa Dillon

For someone not yet 30, Lisa Dillon has cut a serious swathe through the British theater. From early work at Sheffield's Crucible in Yorkshire to high-profile productions at the Almeida and the National, not to mention her West End debut as Hilde Wangel in The Master Builder, opposite Patrick Stewart. Accustomed to classic roles, Dillon donned period garb to play Mary Smith in the epic TV series, Cranford, so it's no doubt come as a particular pleasure for her to inhabit the bracing, contemporary environment of David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky. The show consists of three interlinked playlets on the topic of love.. Dillon plays Helen, a twentysomething teacher who in the opening scene is being let down in the run-up to dinner by her putative boyfriend, Nick (Chris O'Dowd), who has taken a new job and wants to discard Helen in the process. Broadway.com caught up with Dillon to talk about love's difficult path and the mightily assured course she has so far traveled in her career.

So, no period garb for you in this one—unless you count 1996 [the year in which her scene is set] as period.
I haven't done a play more recent than Tennessee Williams [Period of Adjustment, at the Almeida], which was 1956, though, ironically, I feel as if I've been doing modern work when actually if you look at it on paper, I haven't. Things like this really kick into my [drama school] training at RADA where I was trained to do contemporary stuff as well as the period pieces.

Were you consciously looking for something more modern?
Absolutely. I think doing something modern at this stage was really quite critical. Although the parts I have played have been exceptionally varied, I have been lucky not to get typecast, so it wasn't that it was getting in any way dull or redundant but I just wanted to do something really now.

Lisa Dillon and Chris O'Dowd in Under the Blue Sky

Though you do get to dress well for the part.
Oh, yes. This is a big evening for Helen, so she's wearing a dress. She actually makes a reference to her outfit. She says it's flattering, and I am indeed wearing a flattering dress. [Laughs]

It's a tricky task, this play: You and Chris have to kickstart the evening even though the two of you are never seen again once your scene together is over.
Quite. You have to go from naught to 60 in an instant and then you're done. You have to sit back and pass on the baton and let the others finish it, and that's a strange thing—to let other actors finish your story in a way. There's a demand to get it right, with no kind of warm-up available to you; you're thrown on and you've just got to do it when, of course, what every actors wants is more stage time. We had all worked really independently of one another until the first run-through. There's nothing like meeting the rest of your company for only the second time since the read-through and having to perform your scene in front of them. When it was over, we let out a huge sigh of relief.

It must be tempting after your bit is done just to go home. Do you stay for the curtain call?
Well, I think it's all about a company spirit, isn't it? I'm sure I'd love to be say in Sheekey's around the corner having fish pie, but the point is, the curtain call is the only moment where I do get on stage with those brilliant people…

…Who of course include Catherine Tate in the middle playlet, in what is a decided change of pace for her. [Tate plays Michelle, a sex-mad math teacher capable of real savagery.]
This quite definitely adds another dimension to her incredible, chameleon-like kind of transforming abilities. You see little flickers of things that you might think are vaguely recognizable, and you're then taken by surprise.

Lisa Dillon in Under the Blue Sky

What about your scene partner, Chris O'Dowd, another TV name who hasn't done all that much theater work?
Yes, but Chris has done a lot of camera work and he's a really fine actor. I'm really, really lucky to be getting to work with him. He's absolutely brilliant, with instincts like dynamite. And it's interesting: sometimes as a company we will each refer to our “scenes,” but David and Anna Mackmin [the director] are careful to point out that it's your “act.”

David's play was seen before, albeit briefly, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 2000, though this is a fresh cast and production. Is it still the same text?
David has made a couple of tiny, tiny tweaks, which are really just to do with making sure that the audience gets the context that this begins in 1996. A couple of things have been flagged to set it in its time. The first line is, “The ceasefire is over,” and we had to take a little care that people realized this wasn't post-9/11.

The ceasefire may be over, but the war between Helen and Nick, Chris's character, has just begun.
Yes. Helen is a woman in her late 20s, a geography teacher, who is a good woman and certainly a good teacher, and someone who has kind of subscribed to a noble profession [teaching] very much in a vocational way and who places huge investment in her work. And then of course she falls crazily in love with a guy and can't get him. And it doesn't matter how intelligent you are at that point. If you can't get what you want, it can push you into doing quite drastic things.

That must be—what's the word: odd? cathartic?—given that you have just come through a reasonably public break-up of your own [with Patrick Stewart].
Yeah, I think so. It all feeds into you. That's the crazy weird thing with acting. I think you can learn practically everything through experience. You can self-manage, so to speak, your creativity.

Was it inevitable that you would act?
My parents weren't actors, so that wasn't it. But I grew up in the Midlands and, luckily for me, they decided to move away from there when I was nearly two and they just ploughed me with all the opportunities that were available. I probably did about 15 different activities a week: musical instruments, horse riding, dance classics, gymnastics, you name it. And the one thing that stuck was the acting.

Did an exceptional teacher or two make a difference, as David's play suggests it can?
Education was for me a really good experience and something I thrived off of, though I didn't realize it so much at the time. I must have had some brilliant teachers because I developed this passion for finding out more, and it came from that as opposed to having my head in a book. But of course my character is teaching in a very demanding school in the East End where knives are being pulled. That wasn't my experience.

You seem to have worked nonstop since leaving RADA in 2002.
My first thing was Cambridge Spies for the BBC opposite Toby Stephens—that was my first job, and it was during that that I got Iphigenia at the Crucible, which led to The Master Builder. Iphigenia was directed by Anna, who is directing this. It was my first play, but I don't think either of us have mentioned it. Anna doesn't do small talk, which I love about her. There isn't room in her head for anything other than the play.

You have yet to work on stage in New York, is that right?
Nothing. I wait for the phone call every day [laughs]. That would just be a phenomenal thing to have happen. I was thinking with this play that they would love it over there. It is just a really exciting piece of work.