INTERVIEW: Victoria Yeates on playing Imo in new RSC play Ben and Imo – exploring the tempestuous relationship between Benjamin Britten & Imogen Holst
New RSC play Ben and Imo explores the tempestuous but unrequited relationship between Benjamin ‘Ben’ Britten and Imogen ‘Imo’ Holst as they worked on opera Gloriana for the late Queen’s coronation. Here Victoria Yeates tells Gill Sutherland why she’s so excited to be playing the hugely underrated Imo.
You’ve just been in preview with Ben and Imo – are you still working things through?
You don’t know how funny it is until you have an audience – [playwright] Mark Ravenhill is very funny but it’s also dark. It’s working out where that shift is as it flips very quickly between comedy and drama – there are sharp changes. It does get quite dark so some of the laughter is from anxiety – so how do we lead the audience away from that and steer it back into the right pace and tempo is what we’re working out. But it’s going well.
There is just the two of you onstage, that must be a lot of pressure.
It is intense doing a two-hander but this is the most intense one I’ve done. Because of the subject matter they have a very intense and complicated relationship. Also we never leave the stage – we do all the scene changes ourselves. I might run off, get changed and come back on again. The text is also very tense, rich and detailed, it’s an amazingly written play but quite demanding, technically and emotionally. We go through a bit roller-coaster ride by the end, it flips – there are shifts – and what Erica [Whyman, who directs] calls corners, where they have an argument or are head over heels for each other then another argument – it doesn’t stop, which makes it interesting to watch.
Are nerves a thing – do you feel that pressure?
I sort of got my nerves out the way for the opening night with the dress rehearsal. I’ve just been really enjoying us being up there with an audience. We felt ready for an audience – it’s all there. We can just look at each other and play. That’s what’s great about acting, and Sam [co-star Sam Barnett] is such a brilliant actor, so it’s just a joy because we go on, we’re just there with each other and we go for it.
Did you know Sam before?
No, but we have lots of mutual friends. So lots of them said to me, ‘Oh you’ll really get on’. So we just really clicked from the beginning, which meant we’ve just been able to play, we felt supported. We’ve always got each other’s back and felt very safe working with each other. There are no egos to work around, it’s just two people really being open and present for the other person. In rehearsals we just didn’t stop laughing.
That’s important as I think a play about an opera could across as really highbrow and impenetrable, but it’s really the relationship between two people. We have a lot of fun together on stage and I think that comes through and that’s what people will probably connect with. That’s why it’s called Ben and Imo, not Gloriana.
Opera can be seen elite and niche – do you think that might put people off?
Feedback from people who aren’t into opera that have seen it has been that they have loved it because of the characters – and of course the music from composer Connor Mitchell is fantastic.
Mark has written a love story. He said there are plenty of rom-coms about the gay guy with the straight woman, but where is the meaty stuff?
So it’s a meaty rom-com about a gay guy and a woman who falls for him – and they have to compose an opera! It is complicated!
And it’s also a lockdown play. They are by the sea in this house for nine months, and they have to write this opera. They are in a pressure cooker.
Imo is the daughter of composer Gustav Holst, and now she’s working for the famous Benjamin Britten – but who is she?
We’re obsessed with social media now, she’d be a nepo baby now, wouldn’t she? I suppose she is trying to make her own way in the world and escape. She wanted her own name.
Erica thinks that Imo is her most favourite portrayal in a play of a woman.
Wow, that’s a big!
She is such a relatable character. I said to Mark, how have you written so well for a woman? It’s so detailed and deep – there are so many layers and subtext.
Imo stands up for herself, and won’t let Ben be a child and play his games – she’s completely different to everyone else he’s normally had around… but then she gets caught out and falls in love with him.
The play is pretty exquisite and you don’t get plays like this come up very often. When I read it, I immediately thought this is one of the best new plays.
What was the trigger that led Mark to write the play?
He was asked to write something for radio for Benjamin Britain’s 100th anniversary [in 2013, the play was on Radio 3].
And then he developed it during lockdown. It’s hard writing about famous people, but he’s done something very clever where he’s picked a specific moment in time.
Presumably he didn’t know about Imogen when he started to look at Britten, but it makes it a human story. It’s wonderful discovering these incredible lost people. She was a prolific and amazing musician and composer – and she inhabited this man’s world of classical music.
Do you think if she had been a bloke she would be better known?
It would have been a totally different story. But now the BBC Symphony Orchestra has recorded some of her lost music recently. It’s exquisite; she was remarkable and very inventive. She danced all around the world – travelling with dance troupes in the 1920s and 1930s. She was very free.
She chose not to get married and have children. For that time, that was revolutionary. She gave her life to music.
Are you reclaiming her?
Yes, it’s giving her a spotlight. Honestly, she was absolutely wonderful. I’ve always been a huge fan of Doris Lessing, and I think Imo is a musical version of her.
Are you musical?
I played piano at when I was growing up, and I’m a singer and have done some musicals.
And my husband’s a composer and a musician.
I’ve always been really into music – David Bowie, Kate Bush – it’s been a big part of my life.
How have you researched Imo and found out about her?
There’s a really good autobiography. And there is the most incredible archive at Aldeburgh that the Peter Pears Foundation looks after [Pears was Britten’s partner, and they lived together at The Red House in Aldeburgh]. In the play, Ben reads a note out to Imo for Christmas – and we got to see the original note, which was amazing, plus all her diaries – handwritten with various things crossed out she didn’t want people to see.
She was a free spirit, quite bold, and I’ve always spoken my mind, and especially with men I’ve never been scared to stand up for myself and say what I think. So I connect with her, she’s a joy to play.
So is your portrayal of Imo an impersonation?
We didn’t want to do impressions. That was the big thing when we started because they’ve got to be real people. We’re not doing The Crown. You don’t need to mimic their voices – BBC RP – or things like that.
It’s more her private than public persona. In private she was really raucous and had this vulgar laugh and quite a low voice.
Erica is definitely one of our best directors. Her thing is being authentic and she’s just so perceptive. She digs into the text and gets deep into the emotion and can see exactly what is going on with the character.
You don’t get jobs like this coming around very much: where it’s Mark Ravenhill and Erica Whyman! So it’s a treasure.
Tell us about how you got the job.
I think the casting director had seen me in The Crucible a couple of years ago [in 2017 playing Elizabeth Proctor], and then called me in for this. Sam was cast a while before, but my audition was quite last minute, in December. I’ve been a big fan of Mark’s for years, he’s such a star, and he was in the audition. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I want the part!’
It was a great audition. I just really felt like I knew who Imo was. And I really clicked with Mark and Erica and they offered it to me the next day.
Let’s just go back to where you grew up and how you got into acting.
I grew up in Bournemouth. I had a wonderful drama teacher, who’s actually coming up in a few days to watch this. I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and just did acting alongside. Then I got into the National Youth Music Theatre. And so I did that for quite a few years. I worked with a wonderful director called Jo Davies – who has actually done quite a bit at the RSC and runs Sydney Opera. When I was about 15 she said to me you should really think about being an actress. And I thought, yeah, that is what I want to do.
I moved straight up to London after I got my A-Level results, with like £100, and I got a job at a pub. A nice friend of my mum’s gave me the money to pay to audition for drama schools. And I got into RADA, so I was lucky.
You became a regular on prime-time telly, playing Sister Winifred in Call the Midwife – how did that come about?
I just met my husband and I thought I don’t want to go off to Lincoln, Prague or wherever I was having to work or tour. I’ve just met this guy. I want to be in London and I want buy a house. I decided I need to get a regular role in a BBC drama. And luckily, within a couple of months, I got Call the Midwife, and did that for five years, which brought a little bit of financial stability.
I stopped in 2018 because I got Fantastic Beasts [the Harry Potter film prequel], and also Sister Winifred wasn’t one of those parts where I was going to be fulfilled as an actress – you make financial choices – so now I’m free to make choices about what I want to do next.
And how is it being at the RSC?
My dad took me to see The Taming of the Shrew at the Swan when I was ten, and I went, ‘Oh my God, I want to do that.’ I always wanted to work at the RSC, and at the Swan specifically, and things have come up before but I’ve not connected them… one was a restoration play. But when I read Ben and Imo, I thought this is amazing. I could hear Imo. If I can’t quite hear the role then I think, well, that’s not for me.
I’ve loved working almost in symbiosis with Erica. Like, I’ll be thinking something and she’ll give me a note on it. Or vice versa.
Safe to assume you’d work for Erica and Mark again?
Oh my gosh, of course. Will she have me? Basically me and Sam want to do every play together with Erica.
I would like to do some more musicals. I love Sondheim… Sam and I also love Chorus Line… Basically we’ve been doing this highbrow play and running around, dancing and singing.
We decided that Connor Mitchell [the show’s composer] is going to write us a new musical, Erica will direct and Mark is going to write the script – Sam and I will star!
Sounds great. We’ll look forward to seeing Ben and Imo, Part II the West End Musical!
