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A Quick Q&A with Aunt Polly of Peaky Blinders

On October 19, 2016May 29, 2021 By Gingersnap4Helen No Comments

Helen McCrory Tells What to Expect in the New Season Three

by Staff | Channel 24 | October 19, 2016

Cape Town – The hit show Peaky Blinders returns for a third season on BBC First (DStv 119).

Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is drawn into a maze of global intrigue in the electrifying new season of Steven Knight’s acclaimed family saga.

Approached by a secret organization on his own wedding day, Tommy finds himself at the center of an international arms deal that could change the course of history.

His legal and illegal businesses have made him rich beyond his dreams. .He now inhabits a Roaring Twenties world of beautiful people and sumptuous mansions, and he has found love at last. But Tommy’s relatives have become increasingly difficult to handle, and threaten to blow the Shelby family apart.

Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory) is Tommy’s second-in-command, the person he most trusts with the secrets and ambitions of the family business. But the return of her son Michael to the fold has made Polly uneasy about the company’s illegal enterprises. When she befriends a member of the upper classes, Polly imagines different possibilities for her future, and begins to ask herself questions that could strike at the very heart of the Peaky Blinders.

McCrory sat down for a quick Q&A about her characters and what to expect in the new season.

Where did we leave off with Polly in series two and how do we find her in series three?

We left Polly in series two having been reunited with the son that had been taken from her when he was young. She understandably feels hugely guilty about her past and wants to defend him with everything she has. Campbell, played by Sam Neill, sees this weakness in her and uses it to humiliate her, compromising herself in order to save her son. Polly is further humiliated by the fact that her son and everyone else knows what she has done and so she does what Peaky Blinders do and she kills Campbell.

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Interviews Print Media The Deep Blue Sea

‘Heart in her mouth’: Helen McCrory brings compassion to a tragic role in The Deep Blue Sea

On September 29, 2016April 12, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Helen McCrory’s Hester in The Deep Blue Sea

Peter Craven | September 29, 2016 | Sydney Morning Herald

Helen McCrory is at 48 one of the big-time actresses of the British stage, a classical actor who can burn up the stage in modern roles as well. You might have seen her as Cherie Blair with Helen Mirren in The Queen or as Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, or on TV in Peaky Blinders.

In 2005 I saw her in the West End in what is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest comic role for a woman, Rosalind in As You Like It to Dominic West’s Orlando. McCrory’s voice was deep velvet and her wit razor sharp, a Rosalind for the ages.

National Theatre live broadcasts have shown her in The Last of the Haussmans with Julie Walters, and as a riveting Medea. Now she’s doing a modern classic, Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea.

“I worked with [Harold] Pinter on Old Times and when I asked him who his favourite modern playwright was he said Rattigan,” McCrory says. “How bizarre, I thought – how deeply bizarre. Surely they couldn’t be further apart in content and style?” Pinter with his menacing pauses, his uncanny ear for dark implications.

Continue reading ‘Heart in her mouth’: Helen McCrory brings compassion to a tragic role in The Deep Blue Sea

Print Media Reviews The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea Review: Helen McCrory blazes in passionate revival

On June 9, 2016April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Terence Rattigan’s powerful portrait of emotional turmoil in postwar Britain is beautifully played – if only the sound effects weren’t so disruptive

Michael Billington | June 9, 2016 | The Guardian

Intemperate feelings … Tom Burke and Helen McCrory in The Deep Blue Sea. Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

Terence Rattigan’s best play has been long overdue for revival at the National. Fortunately, it gets an impassioned production by Carrie Cracknell that illuminates Rattigan’s psychological understanding and boasts a shining performance from Helen McCrory. Its only blemish is an intrusive sound score that suggests the characters are living not in west London in the 1950s but on the edge of Krakatoa during its eruption in the 1880s.

On a happier note, Tom Scutt’s design follows the example of the 1993 Almeida revival in creating a grey-green apartment block, with transparent walls, that reminds us that Rattigan’s play offers us a microcosm of 1950s England. The focus is palpably on Hester Collyer, a judge’s wife who has sacrificed ease and comfort to live with Freddie Page, a boyish war hero who cannot meet her emotional needs and who has no place in the modern world.

Continue reading The Deep Blue Sea Review: Helen McCrory blazes in passionate revival

Print Media Reviews The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea: Helen McCrory achingly good as woman adrif

On June 9, 2016May 1, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

McCrory delivers one of the performances of the year

by Henry Hitchings | June 9, 2016 | Evening Standard

Smoke signals: Helen McCrory / Richard Hubert Smith

Her character Hester Collyer is besotted with a man who is incapable of reciprocating her seriousness. When we first see her she’s flat out in front of an unlit gas fire, having failed to kill herself. Throughout the two and a half hours that follow, we suspect another suicide attempt is imminent.

Her lover Freddie is a drunk whose distinguished career in the RAF has given way to a diet of golf and sketchy business meetings. Tom Burke captures the caddish manner of a fallen idol who has slumped into emotional and professional laziness. He’s cruelly insensitive — but retains a faint hint of likeability that makes his callousness feel especially sad.

Interviews Print Media The Deep Blue Sea

5 minutes with Helen McCrory: ‘We’ve become too reverent with Rattigan’

On June 8, 2016April 27, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The Deep Blue Sea actress discusses working with director Carrie Cracknell again and why they are taking an ‘unusual’ stance to Rattigan’s work

Emily Cole, June 8, 2016

I moved all around the world as a child because my father was in the foreign office. I used to do ballet quite seriously but stopped because we moved to east Africa and there wasn’t a ballet teacher there. When I moved to England I had a very influential teacher at my school – like most people who go into the job [acting] do. He was fantastic, he took us to see the theatre and spoke to us about it a lot. I then went off to study at the Drama Centre.

Richard Eyre saw me in a production when I was getting my Equity card and he gave me a lead on the main house at the National. He then went on to give me another seven leads over four years and really, that was my third training.

Helly [Helena Bonham Carter] and I used to spend hours looking at all the props, sets and costumes on Harry Potter. It was great fun because there were so many interesting people in it and we had so much time off, I mean, we spent a long time chatting to each other, and everybody in each department was extraordinary. It was a very happy shoot, it was great fun and David Yates [director] was lovely.

I think Rattigan is a brilliant writer and I feel if he were alive now, how frustrated he might be that everybody does his plays the same way. I’d seen Rattigan performed beautifully but often quite similarly and there seemed to be a house style that had been agreed. With The Deep Blue Sea, I was really interested to see if it was possible to play Hester in a slightly different way and actually approach it as you would for instance with a Shakespeare – you don’t necessarily get up in your doublet and hose and come on with your ruff. We’re very irreverent with the classics but suddenly we’ve become very reverent with Terence Rattigan so ours is a very irreverent production with quite an irreverent Hester. I think that you don’t give true justice as an artist unless you really try and reinvent productions each time you do them. I’m very nervous to see how it will be received because it’s unusual.

It’s really interesting working with Carrie [Cracknell] again because we worked in a very different way on Medea. Ben Power, who did the adaptation, was in the room as well as a chorus of 13 women and a choreographer. We also had Alison Goldfrapp writing the music. Carrie would spend a lot of time managing the production as well as trying to look at the script itself. We often disagreed quite vehemently about things but always got on very well and on this production, I think that that sort of shorthand honesty has led to a trust in the rehearsal room that has been very liberating. It’s a very calm rehearsal room actually and we work hard. There’s not a lot of sitting around talking about anecdotes and going out partying, it’s everybody arrives on the front foot and is ready for work and gets their head down. I find that really interesting and I’ve loved working with her again.

The Deep Blue Sea runs at the Lyttelton Theatre until 21 September.