Actress of the moment and Call the Midwife star Charlotte Ritchie talks to Jane McGowan ahead of her theatre debut this month, in the bitter comedy Private Lives
If the name Charlotte Ritchie doesn’t ring any bells at the moment, it certainly should by the end of this month. For the talented Miss Ritchie will be gracing our television screens in no less than three shows – as rookie midwife Barbara in BBC1 hit Call the Midwife, as posh-girl turned rebel in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat and as horrible Hannah in BBC3’s biting comedy Siblings, which all return to our screens over the coming weeks.
“I have spent the whole year filming,” laughs Charlotte. “And everything I’ve done will be on TV in January – people are going to be sick of me.”
But for Charlotte, the next few weeks are all about the theatre as she makes her touring debut in Noel Coward’s acerbic comedy Private Lives, which premiered in Woking on January 15 (and now comes to Richmond Theatre). The play tells of divorced couple Elyot and Amanda, played by Tom Chambers and Laura Hodges, who are shocked to find themselves sharing a balcony while on honeymoon with their new spouses.
Charlotte plays Sybil, Elyot’s devoted new bride.
“I thought she was just going to be this stock comic character, but our director Tom Attenborough has made her much more interesting. I saw her as the fallout girl, the hysterical one who just cries all the time. I didn’t really understand why she was with Elyot, so I now have to get to grips with their relationship and understand her a bit better. It’s quite heartbreaking what happens to her.”
The youngest of three children, Charlotte was born in Clapham in 1989. She says she always knew she wanted to be an actress, but never dared tell anyone: “I thought if I said it, people would think I already thought I was a good actress.”
She didn’t have to wait long to prove it however, as Charlotte got her big acting break as Oregon in Fresh Meat, the award-wining comedy about a group of house-sharing students, while she was in the last few weeks of studying at Bristol University.
There are suggestions that Private Lives will head into the West End after its 10-week tour, yet Charlotte doesn’t like to think too far ahead. “I pinch myself every time I get a new job. I don’t usually plan more than a month in my life and at the moment I know what I’m doing for the next three – so I’m doing really well.”
Private Lives comes to the Richmond Theatre on February 15-20
