When multi-award-winning actress Janie Dee was filming PD James’ Death in Holy Orders, one in the series of the Adam Dalgliesh books, for the BBC, she told co-star Martin Shaw she was going for a walk. For Janie was filming in her home village of Dorney and she wanted to see her old house in Dorney Reach.
“When I got there I just burst into tears because I wanted to go home,” she recalled. “I had a wonderful life growing up there. Whenever I’m in the area I always make a little detour. My parents, Ruth and John Lewis, moved to Provence 13 years ago but I still miss them being there.”
Janie has never let go of her local roots. When she stars in the Fifties comedy The Little Hut at the Theatre Royal Windsor from 4-8 May, she says she’ll be ‘coming home’, despite living happily for 15 years with her husband, fellow actor Rupert Wickham and her two children, Matilda, 13, and five-year-old Alfie, in London’s fashionable Notting Hill.
“I’m so thrilled. I really love coming to Windsor. It’s my home. It just seems like yesterday that my friend Kay and I used to walk down Peascod Street on a Saturday afternoon and get our pictures taken in Woolworth’s.”
Janie was born in Windsor 44 years ago and lived in Dedworth before moving to Dorney Reach at the age of four. Surprisingly, it was Dorney Church and not the Theatre Royal Windsor which played a big part in her childhood. “We did not have a lot of money when I was little. We went to the panto but I did not actually see much else.
“Dorney Church was really the centre of my life. It was somewhere I was drawn to. It was my community. I would go bell ringing with the Eton boys – and some of them became friends for life. I was in the choir; I was a Sunday School teacher; I was confirmed there; I got married there, and I filmed there when I did Death in Holy Orders.
“My parents were also very much part of the community. They had their own business, R & J Engineering. My dad used to sort out things at Windsor Castle and in the Great Park and my mum would bake apple pies for everyone at Christmas.”
Janie remembers first wanting to perform after hearing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. “I felt my heart soar and that I should dance,” she said. “I first wanted to go on the stage when I went to the Joan Selley School of Dance in Burnham. Joan and Lorraine Cooper were great influences, and Penny Rigden, who used to go round the fairs doing the Can Can. She and her husband Alan were Black and White Minstrels.”
Janie and her sisters, Trudy, Claire and Emma, all went to the Arts Educational School in London, with their mum working as a post woman in Windsor to fund their education.
“The youngest, Emma, is a dancer and choreographer but the middle two are now both involved in the world of healing. However, we are all very grateful for that dance and voice training.”
Janie ‘sang a bit with Joan’, but it was at Arts Ed that she decided to be a ballet dancer – until she realised she would have all the work but not half the satisfaction if she was singing and being funny. “I love hearing people laugh!” she added.
“What I really wanted to be was a Fred Astaire or a Gene Kelly…” – a dream she realised with her first Olivier Award in 1992 for Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production of Carousel, followed by Oklahoma! The Sound of Music, South Pacific, hit West End musicals My One and Only and Mack and Mabel and, later this year, The King and I.
As a solo singer she’s had lots of songs specially written for her, including one by Andrew Lloyd Webber – which she sang in London in her last solo show (accompanied no less by Lord L-W), a show she hopes to do in Windsor.
She has also wowed her audiences as a classical actress in the likes of Sir Peter Hall’s production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and Chekhov’s Three Sisters, not to mention Opera North’s production of Paradise Moscow and Showboat in collaboration with The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Most recently she joined the West End cast of Calendar Girls. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she said. “And it was enormous fun. I didn’t realise that we would all have such a laugh.” As she talked I realised asking her what it was like to ‘get her kit off’ on stage just didn’t come into the equation. For her it would be all part of her job. She was more interested in telling me about meeting the original Calendar Girls and going to stay with Angela, the woman she played on stage.
Janie is particularly well known, however, for her association with Sir Alan Ayckbourn, starring in the original productions of Dreams From a Summerhouse and House and Garden and the more recent revival of Woman in Mind, which she is currently preparing as a screen play.
It was her role as robot Jacie Triplethree in Ayckbourn’s play Comic Potential which really sent her soaring into the stratosphere, reigning on her the three most prestigious drama awards for theatre in London (an achievement matched only by Dame Judi Dench). The Olivier, London Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Best Actress Awards in the UK were joined by the OB Awards, Theatre World Awards, Lucille Lortel Nomination, Drama League Citation and Drama Desk Nomination for Best Actress on Broadway .
“They just threw the awards at me, but that was 10 years ago and it’s still something that people put on posters, which amazes me,” Janie said. “It’s very, very fantastic to win awards but you are still an actor being tested and having to prove yourself. There were nights in Comic Potential when I thought I was awful. The moment you think you are good you lose your vulnerability and appeal. But you never stop needing to be told it‘s great!”
Despite her prestigious career spanning the last 20 years, Janie made her Windsor debut only three years ago, in Harold Pinter’s play Old Times.
“Harold came down and took me to a beautiful Italian restaurant I used to pass as a girl. We had a wonderful dinner; champagne, and he turned up looking like a young man, but I knew it would be the last time I’d see him.”
More recently she made her Maidenhead debut, doing cabaret at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts for producer James Church.
“It meant a great deal to me. All my old neighbours came. I was really moved. The whole of Dorney still comes to see me. When I’m in the West End they get a coach load together. So when I’m in Windsor I’m planning a lunch for them.”
Janie Dee is starring in The Little Hut, a comedy translated by Nancy Mitford from the French original by Andre Roussin.
At the Theatre Royal Windsor, from May 4-8 2010
for more information go to www.theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk
Loading...
You must log in to post a comment.