Eilidh
Loan was just eighteen when she left small town Erskine to take up a place at
Guildford School of Acting. There she was, a teenage mod in her Fred Perry and
Doc Martens, rocking up out of Renfrewshire to take on the world.
By
the end of her time in Guildford, Loan had won the Alan Bates award for most
promising actor in their final year at drama school ahead of 300 other entrants.
Among other things, this enabled her to develop her own play, Moorcroft, a
version of which has already been seen at the John Thaw Studio Theatre. Fellow
actor Elliot Barnes-Worrall, who presented her with the award, described Loan
as “a warrior woman.”
Now
here she is, having already played Lady Macbeth on radio and Lady Jane Grey on
TV in BBC 4’s England’s Forgotten Queen, and the now barely twenty-something Loan
is making her professional stage debut as another driven eighteen-year-old. In
Rona Munro’s new version of Frankenstein, which opens at Perth Theatre next
week prior to a UK-wide tour, Loan plays Mary Shelley, the headstrong author of
the iconic gothic horror novel which has been reimagined numerous times since
its first anonymous publication in 1818. That was when Shelley was twenty. Putting
the book’s author onstage is crucial in Munro’s rendering for this co-production
between Perth Theatre and several other partners.
“We
see Mary go through the emotional rollercoaster of writing a novel,” says Loan
on a break from rehearsals. “She’s an eighteen-year-old writing a story with
huge political significance, and which has serious consequences on her as a
woman. Rona’s script doesn’t shy away from that. Mary’s come from this
background of instability in her family, and we see her go through this
incredible journey to create this amazing character. She has to go through
despair and loss, and she’s incredibly vulnerable while she’s doing it.”
Loan
is referring to the woman originally named Mary Godwin’s precocious youth
following the death of her mother, feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft,
eleven days after she was born. Brought up by her novelist father William
Godwin, the sixteen-year-old Godwin became romantically entwined with poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley, eventually marrying him before writing the book that came
to define her. For all the emotional turmoil that surrounded her, Loan points
up Mary’s other sides.
“She’s
fun and she’s exciting,” Loan gushes. “She’s cheeky. We see her in a really
modern light, and for me it’s really important for young women today to be able
to see that
Growing
up in Erskine listening to soul music with her dad, Loan was Northern Soul
dancing from an early age, She started performing in after school clubs, youth
theatre and local amateur companies, and used to ride a Vespa scooter.
“I
could talk for Scotland,” she says, “and I used to sing and dance all the time,
but none of my family are theatrical people. I’m from a working class
background, and my parents didn’t know anything about theatre, but they’ve been
so incredibly supportive. They wanted to give me as their daughter every
opportunity they could, and to do something I really wanted to do and that
would make me happy. I was really lucky to go to Guildford School of Acting,
and both me and my parents worked really hard.
“The
special moment for me will be stepping out onstage at the Theatre Royal when my
parents and all my family are there. They’re so proud of me, and gave me so
much love and support, and for me to give that back is a really special thing.
It’s really important that schools come along as well, especially from
backgrounds where a career in the arts might not be recognised as a career
option, but which, as I’ve discovered, theatre is a medium like no other. It
opens up a part of you like nothing else does.”
Like Mary
Shelley, Loan started writing young.
“I
always really enjoyed writing,” she says, “but I’m dyslexic so was always put
off it, but when I went to drama school they really encouraged you to make your
own work, so I put pen to paper.”
Moorcroft
is about an amateur football team set up by her dad and others when they were
younger. While the players found camaraderie, they also had to face up to outside
forces beyond their control.
“It’s
a story of toxic masculinity that explores male mental health, drink, drugs and
homophobia,” says Loan. “To watch people from my community to be able to go to
the theatre and see their stories is really important.”
Story-telling
is similarly important for Loan in Mary Shelley.
“It’s
Frankenstein told in a way that, even though you think you know the story, it’s
like something you’ve never seen before,” she says. “It feels new and exciting,
and you’ll hopefully come away having learnt something that you didn’t know
before.”
Such
hunger for her work is what drives Loan, both in Frankenstein and beyond.
“I
want to play iconic women,” she says. “After playing Mary Shelley, I want to
continue to play strong women with vulnerability, characters people can relate
to and see our own truth in. I want to make theatre a career for life, and to
encourage stories that haven’t been told before. I want to get as many people
from my background into the theatre as possible, and to go outside their
comfort zone. One day I hope to leave some kind of legacy behind for young
women to relate to. That’s what Mary Shelley did when she wrote Frankenstein,
and that’s something to aspire to.”
Frankenstein,
Perth Theatre, September 5-21; King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, October 21-26;
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, November 25-30; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen,
February 4-8; Eden Court, Inverness, February 18-22.
www.horsecross.co.uk
The Herald, August 31st 2019
ends
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