She’s known to soap fans as feisty fashion designer Angie Freeman in Coronation Street but actress and playwright Deborah McAndrew’s latest project couldn’t be further from the famous cobbles.
It’s 20 years since Yorkshire-born Deborah played her final scenes in Weatherfield but her career has taken a different path over the past two decades, with the mum-of-one finding huge success as a playwright, winning acclaim for her original plays and adaptations for the Northern Broadsides theatre company, and co-founding the Stoke-on-Trent-based Claybody Theatre Company.
But this year has seen her taking on a whole new challenge – writing a full length adaptation for the 2018 Chester Mystery Plays, a task she found ‘absolutely daunting’ at first.
Speaking to The Chronicle, Deborah described writing her own version of the historic community theatre event as ‘a once in a lifetime job for me’.
“I’ve found the general experience absolutely daunting but a huge privilege. I’ve tried to make my presence as positive as I can,” she explained. “And one of the upsides to this gig is getting to know Chester as I always wanted to know more about it. I love history. When I was a kid we would visit Chester and I’ve been back to do events like Spirit of Christmas but I’m really happy to spend more time here.”
Deborah first saw the Chester Mystery Plays in 2013 and had ‘no idea’ she’d end up writing them five years later. As fantastic as she thought they were, she spent much time thinking about how she could put her own unique slant on them.
“My natural instinct as a dramatist is to tell one big story and make it fit the form I know best. I had to tell the story as if nobody knows anything, as if nobody had ever heard these stories before,” she said.
“I think the Mystery Plays is a really bold first step for actors from the community to get up on platforms telling stories and impersonating other humans in a direct way.
A practising Catholic, Deborah has stuck strictly to the original medieval texts with any additions required taken from the Tyndale Bible.
She admits it was a challenge to adapt the plays to a 21st century audience but said two themes jumped out – the centenary year of WW1 and the environment along with humanity’s need to embrace recycling and reuse.
Deborah said: “One of the big ideas is that we are destroying God’s creation, and in particular see Noah’s Flood not just as a biblical story, but as a modern disaster that is affecting the world today due to climate change.
“I was brought up as a Catholic and have always been very interested in Christianity and Theology – at university I studied medieval drama and that area just fascinates me – I think cultural drama grows out of religion.
“However you feel about these stories, whether you think they’re a myth – they are fundamental of human experience and always will be,” she said. “Which is why you can keep referring to them and think about what they mean now.”
The 50-year-old who lives in Stoke-on-Trent, attends rehearsals every few weeks and says she finds it ‘so moving’ to see her ideas taken on board and played out on stage.
“I hope it’s as clear and coherent as possible,” she adds. “I try to imagine what the audience wants because after all – it’s for them.
“There’s something wonderful about working with non professional actors – there’s just such a great naivety about the community cast, a real freshness about what they’re doing.
“I’ve been moved to tears in rehearsals when they all stand together and sing. They’re not filtered by craft. It’s wonderful.”
Although she hasn’t completely given up acting, it’s fair to say that Deborah’s plate is so full right now, a possible return to Coronation Street isn’t something she’s thinking about in her near future.
In fact she’s so busy, she says she can hardly find time to watch any TV, let alone catch up on what’s going on in her old stomping ground.
“I don’t watch much TV, not because I’m down on it, I’m just so busy I find that unless something really grabs me, I can’t just sit down and watch it,” she admits. “I’d rather be doing things.”
But she still ‘occasionally’ keeps in touch with her Corrie co-stars, including Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts), Vicky Entwistle (Janice Battersby) and Sean Wilson (Martin Platt) to name a few.
Recalling her life on The Street, where she played Angie from 1990-1993 and then again from 1996-1998, Deborah said: “It was all an accident on how I went in to Corrie back in 1990 and ended up staying for so long. But I think my character had a shelf life; she was educated and ambitious so there was only so far they could go with her.
“I do think it’s difficult for the Corrie directors these days – back in the early ‘90s when I started there were just four channels, no internet, no Netflix – a family sat down and watched TV every night together.
“It was a different time and viewing figures were huge. There were lots of high comedy characters in it then, now the storylines have to be dramatic to compete with each other. It’s really hard to make high quality TV in a world where there’s so much competition.”
But for now, Deborah is putting her heart and soul into the Mystery Plays, which will be presented in the nave of Chester Cathedral from June 27-July 14.
“It should be and I hope it will be, an extraordinary shared experience and because of the size of it, the history of it I think it will,” she said. “ It speaks to you about universal things of what it means to be human. You can’t get that on Netflix.”
