Multi award-winning Felicity Kendal is starring in the title role as Eduardo de Filippo’s classic comedy Filumena tours to the Theatre Royal Bath , 12 – 16 November.

How did this play actually come about? It was from Bill Kenwright, wasn’t it?

He wanted to find a play for me and he felt we must work together again. He was being the usual Bill Kenwright: absolutely, amazingly funny and relaxed and jokey. And, you know, the fact that he and Michael [Rudman, Felicity’s late partner] were not well at the same time was something to talk about. I had worked with him many, many times and we absolutely loved each other. I used to call him boss. Then Michael died and I was away and Bill rang and he was just so lovely and funny and reminiscing about things and he said, look you’ve got to do Filumena.

What is Filumena about and what drew you to this character?

I read the play and I imagined saying the lines and I wanted to be in that play. That’s what draws me to something. I love the play. I love the way it evolves. And the character is strong. She has had everything thrown at her in her life. And she could be the ultimate victim; she is in fact a victim of circumstance and fate. But she is anything but victimised. And she just pushes ahead with determination. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and she is full of passion, passion for the man she loves, passion for her children, passion for her family, passion to live against all odds from a very difficult start in life and quite a difficult life. Overcoming difficulties and making them into something successful is something I admire in people and that is this character. For me, with acting, you’re creating something that is actually not real. It’s not you, but you have to understand the facet of that complicated character that you’re asked to draw.

The play is hugely religious, in that my character’s strength comes from her religion – she’s Catholic – and her strength comes from a belief in what is right. It’s also a play about deception, why it’s necessary, if it’s necessary. It’s a play about jealousy, about children, about class and caste and a woman’s place and it’s also a play about surviving love and how incredibly intolerable poverty can be, and how that can impact on a woman’s choices in those days. So it’s touching an awful lot of things that people talk about. The character I play is an older woman, but her life, the life of the man she loves when they were younger, was quite extraordinary and that’s what you learn about.

Do you know much about the original playwright, Eduardo de Filippo?

I don’t know much about him. The play is set in Naples. I saw the original production of this translation (by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall). Years and years ago, Zeffirelli directed it, in 1977. That was in London with Joan Plowright. Judi Dench did the second production (in 1998). They were memorable. Absolutely memorable. But I don’t see that their performances are in any way going to be the one I do. There’s more than one way to play the character. It’s that beautifully written.

The play is not very well known, so nobody has seen it played hundreds of times. So you hear it in your head as your own rhythm and tune. I’ve found working on this progressively more difficult, because I think it’s the first time for years that I haven’t had Michael giving me a kind of, well, how many more hours are you going to do that? And I have a way of working that has always been very much part of our life together and that really has brought home that he’s not here. He would always give me his opinion about a play and whether I should do it or not; I haven’t had it on this. So I had no idea whether he would say, don’t touch it, you will be absolutely boring, in which case I wouldn’t have. So that opinion isn’t there to draw on. So there’s no strength from that. I mean, in the past he has sometimes said, you must do this because you’d be wonderful. And he was, you know, usually pretty good and sometimes he would say that’s not for you and if I went ahead he was proved right. I tend to spend a long time at the kitchen table writing it out and rewriting and rewriting and that’s how I learn. And you know every now and again, well there would be words of encouragement or, have you got to act three? So I don’t have anybody to comment, but, you know, that’s not to say I’m not loving it. I do enjoy the process and I do think the more I read the script, the more I am just so happy to be doing this job. I just love this play.

One of the key people in the production is obviously the director, Sean Matthias.

I’ve seen a lot of his work, which I think is just lovely. I’ve met him many times. He’s a gorgeously relaxing person to be with, but with a very firm and incredibly highly skilled and intelligent way of looking at plays. And so he absolutely was somebody that I’ve always wanted to work with. He creates this band of merry men, which is very important when you’re putting on a play. I think he will be, well, I hope, a friend for life, because he clearly is a very special person. He has something, which to me is a very important part of being a director, he has a very firm idea of how he will steer the ship right and it is not that it is his vision, but it is his collecting of all the various things that are going on. I like directors like that and I know I will love working with him.

What is it, Felicity, all these years on that keeps you wanting to get back on stage?

I think one of the things I realised is that I actually like to work. That’s what I am. I’m a working Cocker Spaniel. I’m not, you know, a show dog and I’m not a lap dog. I’m working and that’s what I love and I feel it’s just what I’m supposed to be doing. And I just feel better about it when I’m doing it. I love being in the company of clever people doing a job that I understand.

I was going to ask are you looking forward to getting back on tour?

Going on tour is very much part of my history as an actor. I mean, I started my career going on tour. And I think as things have gone on in the last three, four, five, ten years, it’s more and more important that actors go on tour, because the West End is appallingly expensive. People don’t actually come up from the regions in the way they used to, so we have to go to them and going out on tour is important.

Filumena appears at the Theatre Royal Bath from Tuesday 12^th to Saturday 16^th November. To book tickets contact the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 or visit theatreroyal.org.uk

Felicity Kendal is an original member of the Actors’ Company formed by Ian McKellen and Edward Petherbridge, her many theatre credits include Michael Frayn’s Clouds in the West End, for which she won the Variety Club’s Best Stage Actress Award, and Peter Hall’s National Theatre production of Amadeus. She starred in the original productions of On the Razzle, The Real Thing and Hapgood, the revival of Jumpers, and won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for her performances in Much Ado About Nothing and Ivanov. More recently, her West End credits include the plays Happy Days, Amy’s View, The Vortex, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Relatively Speaking and Hay Fever. She starred in her first musical in 2021 in the London revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican Theatre. Last year, Felicity starred as Dotty Otley in the West End revival of Noises Off, which opened at the Theatre Royal Bath in 2022, prior to a UK tour. Her many television roles include starring as Barbara in The Good Life, Gemma Palmer in Solo, Maxine in The Mistress, Helena Cuthbertson in The Camomile Lawn and Rosemary Boxer in Rosemary & Thyme.