She is blue-eyed and blonde, but the first thing you notice about Olivia Vinall is her voice.
It immediately resonates because there’s a rich and creamy tone when she’s on stage – and on the phone. She’s speaking from London about an amazing headlining part in the first new Tom Stoppard play in almost a decade, The Hard Problem, which will be broadcast for four performances from this weekend at Cinema Nouveau around the country.
Only 27, Vinall’s rise as an actress has been phenomenal. But it didn’t start that way. “It took a year-and-a-half before anyone noticed me after I had finished my studies,” she says. “I was quite desperate and didn’t know how to go about getting work.” What she did do was put her head down, work harder, go to auditions and put herself out there to be seen.
“I was lucky,” she speaks those oft-heard words from people in tough professions who make it work. Probably there’s some of that, but then you have to do it yourself. Vinall more than makes her mark in this, her second time working for National Theatre artistic director Nick Hytner, on his last play on his watch.`
She had previously been cast as Desdemona in Hytner’s Othello with Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear, and had also starred as Cordelia in Sam Mendes’s King Lear opposite Simon Russell Beale.
But this time she stepped out as a heroine she could make her own. “I love Shakespeare but you’re always aware that so many people have already played the roles and while you want to do your own interpretation, you can’t help some memories slipping in.”
And then to tackle someone as smart, sassy but especially so firmly part of the sciences, an area Vinall didn’t know at all. She found creating her own person incredibly liberating.
“When I read the script, I was struck fore-most by the predicament of getting my head around this. I hadn’t studied any of these subjects, but then I grabbed onto her emotional centre,” which is something she understood.
It’s exactly that space, which resonates with the actress, and which she decided was her way in. Hilary, she says of her character, is deeply involved in the sciences, but she thinks there’s more to life. “Science doesn’t have all the answers. there’s a space in our lives – an otherness,” she explains and that’s what her character fights for.
Vinall felt blessed because this was her second time working with Hytner which made the process easier and Stoppard was on hand every day. “He could explain the thinking behind all these ideas, unlock the thought processes,” she says.
Her character is centre stage, the one who drives the story and does most of the talking. It is a piece that makes you think and keeps you talking and that’s what Vinall enjoys about good theatre.
Getting into her character, she had to create a back story for Hilary. She had to understand what drives her and who this woman is. “Once I’m on stage, it’s like flying,” she says and she knows she has to be completely centred or she would unravel.
Hytner’s goal is to relate to the audience as strongly as possible and with this one they were dealing in incredibly complex thoughts which is why the stage is dominated by what looks like a massive brain which is running spectacular thought patterns all over the place.
She is still in awe of Hytner who saw something in her that allowed her to follow Shakespeare’s Desdemona with Stoppard’s Hilary. “It has been a unique challenge and a thrill that Nick saw something,” she adds.
She is also thrilled that the NT Live production comes towards the end of the run because it has allowed the play to breath and to grow. “We’ve had more time to develop the Stoppardian style which is very particular,” she says and it has become easier as the run has progressed.
And during the day she has to keep going for auditions, looking for the next job. She also tries to get into her character’s head by reading “lightly” about the sciences, “it’s what she would be doing.” A little yoga also goes a long way and she has to remember to rest her voice – especially on two-show days!
She loves the NT Live worldwide approach and even with this, her third time, it was the most nervewrecking because The Hard Problem does turn around her performance. But the reward is that the world is watching.