Fiona Chisholm
YVONNE COPLEY is a seasoned actor, director and international businesswoman and is not afraid of Virginia Woolf. However playing Martha in Edward Albee’s 1962 play about the volatile relationship between the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed woman with a “daddy complex” and her passive aggressive husband George, is proving to be the most exhausting role she has ever tackled.
Directed by Darryl Spijkers for Carnivals of the Heart, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf will have four performances from Thursday to Saturday at Somerset West’s Playhouse, and another four performances at Artscape between February 4 and 6.
“The role is both mentally and physically really tough,” said Copley of her first stage appearance in six years. “Vocally it’s challenging because the range is very hard and Martha is complex. I don’t want to be accused of trying to be like Elizabeth Taylor, so have deliberately avoided watching the benchmark film with Richard Burton. She’s not physically, mentally and vocally me. Also I believe that emotions on the stage have to be put across in a very different way from those on the big screen.
“I see Martha as a strong woman but there are elements that she is unfulfilled. So her internal frustrations could let me fall into the trap of portraying her as an out-and-out bitch but there is more to her. Her frustrations manifest themselves in being seen as a bitch, but underneath there is a very passionate woman who deeply loves her man.”
She talks about the strange way Martha’s love is portrayed in vicious emotional games which are partly the reason she and George stay together.
She equates the games to “spider and the fly sort” with Martha enticing into her web every new guy she considers could take over from her father, the president of a small New England college. They are dragged into their games almost as if to see how much backbone they have.
“Daddy is a very big in her life and part of her fear is what will happen when daddy is no longer there. That is also behind her fear of losing George.”
What Copley does have in common with Elizabeth Taylor is that her stage husband George, an associate professor, is played by her real husband Nigel Sweet. This is a first for the couple who have occasionally acted together in a play but usually she has directed him.
On a memorable occasion she was Medea, the central character in the Euripides tragedy and Sweet was her ex-husband Jason. Medea kills his new wife and murders their own children to hurt him as much as possible.
“I sometimes think I might kill George/Nigel off this time,” she jokes.
This is the exact opposite of their real life relationship. For 35 years Yvonne and Nigel were in “complete commitment” as a married couple who raised a son, but only formalised their marriage a few years ago.
“Frankly I was scared. I knew this man was my soul mate and I didn’t want to shift anything. So many times people rush into marriage and then it falls to pieces. Something weird in the back of my head said that if there was no piece of paper forcing me to stay, I would always find a way to choose to stay and so worked harder in the tough times.
“Nigel’s dad once said that with all that we had been through together if we had married we would probably have got divorced.”
George and Martha involve two unsuspecting young guests Nick and Honey to join them for a late-night drinks party.
As they are lured into their hosts’ manipulative and savage games, they too bare their fragile souls in a plot that is sometimes humorous in its ferocity. These roles will be played by Samantha Taylor and Thomas Agates at Somerset West and by Taylor and David Shelver at Artscape.
The festive season has cut short the rehearsal time but with Yvonne’s long history of theatre – she was aged three when she sang Me and my Teddy bear and performed a little dance – she is confident that it will all come together by opening night. Her professional business and theatre life are dedicated to ensuring that only the best is good enough.
She is a director of a Dutch global organisation UnitedSucces, which brings female entrepreneurs together, offering them a virtual opportunity for connectivity between women to do business wherever they are.
It is a unique organisation because every single member has to sign the same code of ethics and therefore it means that if one person is sitting in Brazil and wants to do business with someone in India, she knows that the values and ethics are there.
“The disciplines that are required in a business are similar to those in theatre. You start with a concept and idea and work through to make sure that what comes out at the other end is a success. It’s no good expecting people to pay for things and offering them second best. You’ve gottta give it all you’ve got!”
l 0861 915 800, or 021 421 7695 for Artscape performances.