Crowned at last

Now, at last, EastEnders actress Anita Dobson, whose Angie Watts remains one of the Albert Square drama's most memorable creations, gets to wear a crown.

From the Queen Vic to Queen Gertrude, she's the mother of the troubled Prince of Denmark who lends his name - Hamlet - to the Shakespearian drama under discussion.

Dobson joins Ed Stoppard, actor son of playwright Tom, and Alice Patten, actress daughter of former Hong Kong Governor John Patten, in English Touring Theatre's production of Hamlet. The show plays in York next week.

And in case you think that linking the BBC soap and the classics is stretching matters too far, then listen to Dobson on the subject. I suggest, and she agrees, that the two, seemingly disparate, art forms do have something in common.

"I always felt that playing Angie was like playing one of those great tragic roles. She had those great highs and lows, great sweeps of emotion that were comparable to great Shakespeare performances," she says in a voice lacking any of her famous character's Cockney tones.

Dobson studied Shakespeare at drama school but was influenced before that by her father's great love of the Bard's work. "I didn't really see a lot of productions, he just had a love of words. I think he wanted to be an actor but was demobbed with £16 and couldn't afford it," she says.

"He always had a love of poetry, so would quote little things. I would say, 'where does that come from?' and he'd say, 'Shakespeare'. So I had an interest from an early age.

"I think when I started out, when I was very young, I wanted to be an actor and do the great epic tragedies. I thought that's where I would go, I would become a Shakespearian actor."

She performed in the Scottish play at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, and was playing Mistress Quickly for Oxford Playhouse Company just prior to joining EastEnders. She was, she points out, a bit young to be playing that part back then.

The offer to play Gertrude came out of the blue. "I hadn't done any Shakespeare for a while and it's such an interesting character," she says. "I love period costumes and it's set in the 16th century as it's written, so I get a crown and to wear these fantastic dresses."

What she hadn't realised about Gertrude is "how unbearably sad the role is - she's such a victim, she's lost her husband and her son has started to go peculiar, everything starts to disintegrate".

Despite the mother and son angst on stage, she gets along very well with Stoppard, who's taking the title role. "He's the right age, the right temperament and at the right point in his career to play Hamlet," she says.

Appearing in a three hour-plus tragedy does take its toll. The hardest part is the midweek matinee. "Doing two shows in a day, you tend to cry a lot in the second half, so two shows is a lot of heavy emotion - six and a half hours of emotion basically. Doing two on Saturday is better because it's the end of the week and you get Sunday off. But midweek, you've just settled into a new place and have the prospect of two shows the next day," she says, not moaning merely pointing out the facts of acting life.

"I don't tour very much as a rule, so a lot is quite new to me. I did tour in my youth when I went off and did a lot of rep. This is a very gentle tour with only four dates when I can't get home."

Just as she doesn't think an actor can visualise where they're going at the start of their career, so she finds even now there's no pattern to her work. The nature of the business is that it's constantly changing.

"You turn down work you feel you've already done. I find now I'm in a very happy position, I can take time out when I want to and do as much or as little as I want to," says Dobson.

At the beginning of this year, she decided to take some time out, confining her work to Hamlet and a role in ITV1's police drama, The Bill. The last week of the tour overlaps with rehearsals for the Christmas show, Santa Claus The Musical, in which she's appearing in Southampton. It's a brand new show with a cast including Gary Wilmot and Roy Barraclough. "It's a big spectacular show with lots of effects and fabulous costumes, and geared more towards family entertainment than pantomime," she says.

She plays the baddie, the Ice Queen, which isn't so different from her usual panto character, the Wicked Queen in Snow White. "I did principal boy for many years," she recalls. "As time moves on, you have to move with it and someone offered me the part of the Wicked Queen. With some trepidation, I said yes and loved it. I never want to go back to being a goodie again."

* Hamlet is at York Theatre Royal from Tuesday to Saturday. Tickets (01904) 623568.