Dame chance

Hollyoaks serial killer Luxemburg and Carrie And Barry star Quintrell talk to Steve Pratt about reviving Shaw's famous play Pygmalion at York.

THE annual family outing to see the Berwick Kaler pantomime at York Theatre Royal made a lasting impression on Henry Luxemburg. The York-born actor best known as Hollyoaks serial killer Toby Mills credits those Christmas Eve trips - panto and tea at Betty's - with inspiring his acting ambitions.

"They were my first experience of any stage performance, " he says.

"I can still see the odd image of those pantos. My love for panto, good high quality panto, developed there and, without doubt, those early pantos have been very instrumental in my choice of career.

"I'd always had this interest in theatre and put on pantos at school until the age of 16. I was at a boys' school and there was no drama department, then one day a member of staff said, 'are you going to drama school?'."

The answer was yes and now Luxemburg has the chance to tread the boards of the Theatre Royal.

And while he's not working with long-serving panto dame Kaler, he is appearing with regular panto villain David Leonard.

"There's a real resonance coming back to perform at this theatre. It didn't hit me until we went walkabout on the first day of rehearsal, " he says.

He plays Freddy Eynsford-Hill in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, the story of cockney guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Sarah Quintrell) and her introduction to high society by Professor Henry Higgins (Leonard).

Pygamlion has been overshadowed of late by the musical version, My Fair Lady, but Luxemburg was aware of Shaw's original as he studied Pygmalion for GCSE English Literature. The Freddy of the play is different to the Freddy of the musical, he feels.

"My Fair Lady has set him up to be a romantic but he's not in the sense that the musical portrays.

There's more to him than that, " he says. "It's not that he's dim or thick or unaware of his environment, but he's quite content."

He spent three years in C4's Hollyoaks, winning the role of Toby six months out of drama school. "I learnt a lot from being on a soap, " he says. "Everything I was taught was falling into place. You can be taught at drama school but don't learn until you're in the industry. I was relieved all those tools offered to me at drama school were being used and it's very exciting when that happens."

Playing killer Toby, who preyed on blonde beauties, certainly got him noticed. "The good thing about Hollyoaks is that although it reaches a big audience, the actual demographic is quite narrow.

Although you're known to many people as Toby Mills, there's a whole load of people who don't watch Hollyoaks, " he says.

"I don't think I've been typecast because there are so many people who don't know me as the serial killer, If you have a prominent role in a soap you have to wait a bit until you stop being recognised. It's not affected theatre work because people are more open-minded backstage and in the audience. It's opened more doors than it's shut."

He's never lost his love of panto, although it became an on-going joke at drama school. For the past three Christmases, he's appeared in pantomime. "I'm very honest about my love for different aspects of theatre. Panto is the one piece of theatre that brings in every person from every walk of life, " he says.

PYGMALION co-star Sarah Quintrell also found herself in a regular TV role shortly after leaving drama school - Simon Nye's BBC1 comedy Carrie And Barrie with Neil Morrissey. "That was a bit strange, ending up in a sitcom, " she says.

"I was seven months out of drama school, got the part and spent three months working on it.

That was fantastic because once someone trusted me with TV roles, other people would trust me. I ended up doing more TV until we did the second series of Carrie And Barrie."

Straight theatre rather than pantomime aroused her interest in acting. "Mum and dad went to the theatre at lot. I was very little and nagged them to take me. I'd been to ballet and musicals but wanted to go to a play. They thought two hours of Shakespeare for a six-yearold was too much. But they took me, told me the story and learnt to follow it, and I thought, 'I'll do that'."

She's appeared previously at the Theatre Royal in two Pilot Theatre productions, Blood Line and A/S/L.

Playing Eliza in Pygmalion brings added responsibility because people assume they know the character through My Fair Lady.

"That's something I hadn't considered, the weight of expectation. Everyone thinks they know her and, as I did, who she is.

When I went back to the play and read the text, she was very different to my expectations."

The production isn't taking enormous liberties with the play, although she says Cruden is keen for the actors to connect to audiences of all ages. "I'm coming to it as a young woman and a young Londoner, and connecting from our modern viewpoint. I'm not going to go around saying, 'whatever', " she explains.

Pygmalion: York Theatre Royal from Saturday to June 17. Box Office: (01904) 623568 or online at www. yorktheatreroyal. co. uk