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Tessa Churchard
November 25, 2008 05:37 PM
Tessa Churchard in
The 39 Steps
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Age: 43.
Hometown: Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, about 30 miles west of London. "Funnily enough, where I lived was just behind where Roald Dahl lived with Patricia Neal, and I remember very clearly this incredibly glamorous woman,”says Churchard. “I'm from a complete non-theater family, but we did go into London with my grandmother to the theater."
Currently: Playing three roles—well, four actually, if you include a brief stint as a policewoman at the top of the second act—in the ongoing West End incarnation of The 39 Steps, which celebrates its second birthday this month even as the New York version steams ahead on Broadway. "There are something like 139 roles played by the four actors," says Churchard, sounding amazed. "I had already seen [the play] when I got the part but I went back to see it a number of times to make sure I was up to speed. In the playing of it, the show works on a number of levels, and you've got to get them all."
Nothing On: Churchard describes "an absolutely frenetic life backstage" at the Criterion Theatre in order to accommodate the various changes of costumes and wigs and split-second entrances. A bit like inhabiting for real Michael Frayn's classic comedy, Noises Off? Churchard is well-placed to address that possibility having spent three years on and off in the recent revival of Frayn's beloved farce, playing first Poppy and then Belinda opposite such leading ladies as Patricia Hodge, Lynn Redgrave and Cheryl Campbell. "When I did Noises Off, it was such a fabulous comedy and I thought, I'm never going to do anything again that the audience will love as much as this, and then with 39 Steps, I've been given another show that the audience loves to see." Churchard points to specific similarities, as well. "At the beginning of both plays, there's a gag with the phone not working, and they both feature the idea of a play within a play."
Tessa Churchard
& Jo Stone-Fewings
in The 39 Steps
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Old Friends: It helped with this job that Churchard already knew her Richard Hannay, leading man Jo Stone-Fewings, having acted with him and now-wife Nancy Carroll in a few of Noel Coward's Tonight At 8:30 plays some years back at the Liverpool Playhouse. "At one point, I was playing Jo's wife and Nancy was playing his lover," says Churchard, whose own husband is a social worker. And just as Stone-Fewings and Carroll have a baby daughter, Churchard and her husband have a nine-month-old son, Ben, whose own sleeping patterns dovetail well with the demands of theater performance. "I'm at work while he's asleep, so in that way, this was an easy decision to make. I'm very lucky, too, because I'm with Ben all day and there's only an hour between my going and my husband coming in, and some times he works from home, or there are the two grannies." Churchard gives the entrancing laugh of a new parent: "I think he gets a fantastic time!"
Generally Eclectic: Churchard has a sizable list of theater credits, including a stint playing the sister to Olivier nominee (and eventual winner for The Seagull) Kristin Scott Thomas in As You Desire Me, the Pirandello play that Jonathan Kent revived three years ago on the West End. She first trained as a sculptor at Hornsey College of Art, segueing to a one-year graduate course in acting at Webber Douglas because, she laughs, "I liked talking too much." It was subsequent to that, and as a direct consequence of her father falling terminally ill with lung cancer, that she then did a teaching course. "My father was terrified I was going to be an impoverished actor, and he said if I did that course, then he wouldn't have to worry about me." Work life over time has also included the inevitable thespian gig as a waiter, in Churchard's case at London's tony Groucho Club where the clientele included John Malkovich, "who had this incredible chemistry." At one point, she says, sounding surprised by herself, "I had an antique shop; I've done all sorts of things."
Ageless: If Churchard in her 40s might seem older than many a Fresh Face, that's only because she feels as if "I was starting all over again" with her acting career "really around the time of Noises Off onwards." The evident satisfaction with the point at which she has now arrived has to do not just with the roles themselves but their effect on an audience. "It's a great feeling to hear an audience laughing. There are enough sad things in the world, so to hear people laugh is fantastic. It's great to think in your own small way that you're doing something to cheer people up."
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