Speaking ahead of rehearsals in a dressing room above Manchester’s cozy Hope Mill Theatre, the 65-year-old is intent on perfecting her comeback to the role that launched her career: that of a theater actress.
She plays Corral in the world premiere of The Gap by Jim Cartwright, who is most renowned for his melancholy and ramshackle poetry in plays like The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Road. Corral is a playwright who returns to her childhood in London during the swinging ’60s.
Welch remarks, mockingly dejected, “There are some lines that only Jim Cartwright would write.”
Because only you would write that line, I would say, ‘Oh my God, Jim, I can’t get that bloody line in my head!’
“‘Would you have talked to William Shakespeare in this way?’ he asked me.”
“And I went, ‘Yes, I would have!'”
It is highly likely that Welch would not have hesitated to express her opinions to the Bard if she had been performing onstage a few centuries ago.
All of that is a part of her character – the outspoken, raw, sly Geordie matriarch. That’s what, in the eyes of some, makes Welch a national treasure. She becomes a bothersome loudmouth to others.
