GALLERY LINKS:
- Stage: Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett
- Events: “Love, Love, Love” Play Press Night After Party

After four weeks of rehearsals Claire Foy’s new play Love, Love, Love will open with previews tomorrow at the Royal Court Theatre – Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in London. It’s been extended and now runs until June 9 (one week longer). If you’re in London during the coming weeks why not book a ticket to see Claire Foy perform live? Here’s the trailer (no Claire):

GALLERY LINK:
- Stage: Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett

- White Heat: Episode 05: The Eye of the Needle
- White Heat: Episode 06: The Sea of Trees

Claire Foy made her name in a series of superior TV dramas. She talks to Jasper Rees about her new role in ‘Love, Love, Love’ at the Royal Court.

It is and isn’t easy being a photogenic young actress. A certain type of two-dimensional role grows on trees. But finding the kind with extra depth can be more of a challenge. Claire Foy was brought face to face with the way the industry at its most nakedly commercial sees young women when she auditioned for a film in Los Angeles.

“The character was supposed to be ‘the most beautiful girl that Johnny Depp has ever seen’,” she says. “And as I wouldn’t be the most beautiful girl that Johnny Depp has ever seen, I was like, ‘I don’t really know what to do because I’m obviously not right for this part.’ But you go up for it anyway and you don’t get it. I think I’m more suited to playing someone with a chip on their shoulder, probably about not being the most beautiful girl in the world.”

The face is nowadays familiar from a number of superior television dramas. Foy’s face is just unclassical enough to have made her convincing as a series of forthright and even stroppy young misses. She was a forthright heroine in Peter Kosminsky’s The Promise, a spoilt Fascist sympathiser in Upstairs Downstairs, and an assertive proto-feminist in White Heat. (When the casting director of Paula Milne’s drama, which finished last week, was looking for an older version of her, they alighted on Juliet Stevenson.)

Foy’s part of the story in White Heat came to an end after a timespan of 24 years, in 1990, which is where her next job begins. By the time she’s completed her run in Mike Bartlett’s new play Love, Love, Love at the Royal Court, she’ll know more about ageing up than any actress of her generation. Its three acts are set consecutively in the late Sixties, the early Nineties and the present day, and examine the impact of one generation on the next. Foy plays the daughter of two hippies; we first meet her as a 16 year-old in school uniform, and later as an embittered single woman aged 37.

“It’s the Philip Larkin thing: she believes her parents did f— her up. They were children of the Sixties and really went for it. The play is about what the children of those sorts of people might be like, the effect it has if parents are really free-thinking as opposed to really strict. But then, you’re buggered both ways if you’re a parent.”

Foy playing a teenager will not tax the audience’s imagination. Born in the year of the miners’ strike, she looks younger in the flesh than her 28 years. Her early childhood was spent in Lancashire, but her parents moved south to Buckinghamshire when she was seven. She now thinks of herself as neither a northerner nor a southerner. “I did have a northern accent, and when I went to university I knew I wanted to go to the North.”

Her film studies course in Liverpool turned her towards acting. After another year at drama college in Oxford she was soon equipped with an agent, and she landed a part in the BBC drama Doctors. She went on to appear in two of a trilogy of plays for young actors at the National Theatre.

It was a useful platform: a similar project a year earlier launched the careers of Andrea Riseborough (Madonna’s Wallis Simpson), Matt Smith (Doctor Who) and Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man). “We were all really young and going,’Help!’ to each other, ‘We don’t know what to do.’”

She must have been doing something right as she was soon playing the title role in Andrew Davies’s BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit. She had to work round the difficulty of embodying one of Dickens’s wan young heroines. “Dickens did just see her as homely, angelic and giving. It was my job to find the real aspect of that. I looked on her as a sort of a carer whose parent or child is ill. That made her believable in my head.”

She’s been lucky enough ever since to investigate some of the more dramatic crannies of femininity: a troubled lesbian toy girl in The Night Watch, adapted from Sarah Waters’s novel about heartache in the Blitz; a feral tabloid editor, inspired perhaps by Rebekah Brooks in Guy Jenkin’s comedy Hacks; and Upstairs Downstairs’ posh little Brownshirt, based on the Hitler-obsessed Unity Mitford.

“You’ve got to keep challenging yourself,” she says, “and I feel bad if I feel like I’m ever doing something that’s sort of similar. Now it’s about time I played somebody nice again.”

Presumably, like other members of the Upstairs Downstairs cast, she is weary of being asked about the overwhelming shadow of Downton Abbey, the period drama which the nation decided to fall in love with. Did it bother her?

She rolls her eyes. “You can never not come across as sounding like you don’t care. If you go, ‘No, no, not at all,’ people go, ‘That was protesting a bit too much.’ You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The honest answer is we were all just thinking, we’re in this programme, as everyone in Downton Abbey would also be thinking.”

If Upstairs Downstairs does limp back for a third series, Foy won’t be in it again: Lady Persephone topped herself in a dramatic exit from the second series.

There was no part Foy pursued more eagerly than the female lead in The Promise. In Kosminsky’s epic historical drama, she played Erin Matthews, an 18 year-old who becomes obsessed with investigating the story of the British soldiers serving in Palestine in the years before our ignominious exit.

“You get so used to not getting stuff and then watching someone else playing the part and even forgetting you were considered in the first place, but with that I would have taken it incredibly personally. I went to God-knows how many auditions, and when it gets that far down the line I was already playing the part. I’d done so much work for it, and knew everything. I just recognised quite a lot of things about me when I was her age.”

Foy is back in her teens for Love, Love, Love, before projecting forward once more to her late thirties. Will there be something of her in this teenager, too? “Oh there has to be because it’s me playing it. Unfortunately, I’ve only got myself to work with. But I hope I’m not like she is when she’s 37.”

‘Love, Love, Love’ begins previews at the Royal Court (020 7565 5000) on April 27

Added high quality screencaptures from episodes 3 & 4 of ‘White Heat‘ which saw Claire Foy’s Charlotte (Charlie) with 70ies-style long hair giving lectures at the university, moving out of the flat and starting to work for BBC World Service while falling out with Jack. Stay tuned for screencaptures of the last 2 episodes.

GALLERY LINKS:
- White Heat: Episode 03: The Dark Side of the Moon
- White Heat: Episode 04: The Personal Is Political
- White Heat: Trailers

A couple of weeks ago the second series of ‘Upstairs Downstairs‘ came to a dramatic end as all the different storylines came together. The whole cast gave their best, but in my opinion, it was especially Claire Foy as Lady Persie who had some really strong moments and proved what a great actress she is.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Episode 06: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Sorry for the long absence. But I added loads of new stills and promotional pictures from ‘White Heat‘. Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 9pm when the sixth & final episode set in 1990 of ‘White Heat’ airs on BBC Two in the UK.

It’s 1990 and the flat is for sale; Orla organises one last reunion for the flatmates. A brutal revelation has cataclysmic consequences. Back in the present, the last surviving flatmate arrives and the identity of the deceased flatmate is finally revealed.

GALLERY LINKS:
- White Heat (TV, 2012): Promotion
- White Heat (TV, 2012): Production Stills

Source: BBC America

On the eve of war, Beryl and Harry face a race against time to get married. Meanwhile, Mr Pritchard makes a decision which throws the running of the house into chaos, until an old face lends a helping hand. And as Lady Agnes returns to London, a dark discovery has explosive consequences for all inside Eaton Place and changes the landscape forever.

Earlier this week I added screencaptures of last Sunday’s episode of ‘Upstairs Downstairs‘. I have to say, at this point I can’t take anything Sir Hallam says seriously anymore. If he really believes what he’s saying he’s deceiving himself. And kudos to the twist in Lady Persie’s storyline – definitely keeps things interesting though it doesn’t make her more redeeming.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Episode 04: All the Things You Are
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Trailers

VIDEO LINK:
- Trailers & Clips: Upstairs Downstairs

In 2012, a fourth former flatmate arrives. In 1973, London is targeted by an IRA bombing campaign. Alan finally makes his long-awaited play for Lilly, while Charlotte’s volatile relationship with Jack implodes and she realises she must move on. Orla faces a family crisis that will haunt her for life.

As 165 Eaton Place prepares for the Annual Servants’ Ball, Mr Pritchard enjoys a romance with fellow servant Miss Whisset, and starts to wonder if there is more to life than service. With war looming, Harry has a proposition for Beryl; however, a shock revelation threatens to thwart their plans. Meanwhile, as Lady Persie and Sir Hallam continue their dangerous affair, Sir Hallam is about to discover just how destructive his actions have been.

GALLERY LINK:
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Production Stills

VIDEO LINK:
- Trailers & Clips: Upstairs Downstairs

I added screencaptures from the second ‘White Heat‘ episode. Charlotte was doing quite a lot of observing apart from putting stickers on ads that said ‘This ad degrades women’ or ‘This man degrades women’. I think the episode showed quite well at what personal cost modern ideas come or how political views don’t transcend into personal lives. I feel like the events in 1967 shaped Charlotte and I can’t wait to see where she goes from there.

GALLERY LINKS:
- White Heat: Episode 02: Eve of Destruction
- White Heat: Trailers

In last Sunday’s episode of ‘Upstairs Downstairs‘ I was ready to throw things at Sir Hallam and Lady Persie. In my opinion, he was behaving like a spoilt teenager and she was playing games and testing her attraction out of jealousy and general low self-esteem.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Episode 04: All the Things You Are
- Upstairs Downstairs, Series 2: Trailers

Claire Foy is revisiting the Sixties in BBC2 drama White Heat. Next stop? 1990, for a new play about the legacy of the baby boomers.

‘I used to think of period drama as Jane Austen, but it’s recent history as well,’ said Claire, when we discussed the London premiere of Mike Bartlett’s play Love, Love, Love, which will run at the Royal Court from April 27 as a co-production with Paines Plough.

The play is about a couple, played by Victoria Hamilton and Ben Miles, who had a fun time in the Sixties. But when they reach their 60s, their children accuse them of screwing up their lives.

Claire will play their daughter Rosie, who ends up having a mid-life crisis. George Rainsford will play their son Jamie, who lives rent-free at home. Sam Troughton will play their uncle.

Director James Grieve, who is also co-director of Paines Plough, told me that the play explores the view that the baby boomers had it easy compared to today’s generation.

Visit the official site to book your tickets.