Paula Through The Ages

Don’t worry If you’re out and about in Hull and spot a familiar-looking woman trying to listen in to other people’s conversations. Paula Wilcox is not being nosey just researching the local accent for her latest stage role.
Paula – star of Man About the House, The Lovers and more recently Coronation Street fame – joins other familiar TV faces Stephen Tompkinson and Ian Batholomew in To Have and To Hold, the new play by Hull writer Richard Bean coming to Hull Truck Theatre in May.

This role is something very different to the last time I encountered Paula when she played the elderly Southern woman in the title of Driving Miss Daisy at York Theatre Royal. “Who in the world knew I would be doing a play set in Wetwang in Hull?” she asks when we speak at the end of a day of rehearsals at Hull Truck.

“It’s really rather wonderful to be doing the play in Hull and listening to people everywhere you go. My ears seem to be getting bigger as I try to listen to people in shops. It’s a lovely accent, the Yorkshire accent,” says Manchester-born Paula.

The new play by Hull playwright Bean is a bittersweet comedy, centred around elderly couple Jack and Florence, married for 60 years and trying to cope with all the problems that growing old brings. Matters aren’t helped when their children arrive determined to put their parents affairs in order.

“With To Have and To Hold I knew I just wanted to play the part as soon as I started reading it. It’s a play that gets hold of you, wraps itself around you and you just want to stay there with the characters and wish them luck,” says Paula.

The production reunites her with actor Ian Batholomew, playing Jack to her Florence. She’s played his wife – ex-wife if we’re being accurate – before in Coronation Street. Ian was abusive husband Geoff Metcalfe, who was subjecting in his second wife Yasmeen to his coercive behaviour. Paula played his first, similarly abused first wife.

“Our characters had a very unpleasant relationship in Corrie but Ian doesn’t bring any of those qualities with him in To Have and To Hold,” she says.

“Florence and Jack bicker but it’s quite a happy household in a way. As you get older everything starts to be very difficult. It’s a house where people have been happy and had fun. Now it’s about two people who are very old - both in their nineties - and their children who are already on their way to late middle age, in their 50s heading to 60.

“It’s a play about family and old age, about parents and children and in a way about saying goodbye. But it’s very, very funny. It’s hilarious. I’m thrilled that director Terry Johnson asked me to be in it and so thrilled with the other cast members. We seemed to jell from the get-go.”

Like Miss Daisy, Florence is an older woman and that age group are the roles that Paula is offered these days – “and I’m very grateful to have them too,” she says. “I’m of an age and it’s quite fitting. There are so many interesting older parts out there. It can feel a bit cold as you get older because of things.”

She wasn’t particularly looking to go into a soap. “Coronation Street just came up and was offered to me. It was during covid and I was doing another series at the time. So I ended up doing two series during covid. Corrie was great fun and they wrote some lovely stuff for me.

“Television is challenging now. Working in the theatre is so great because you can really take your time, rehearse, talk about everything, see what works and doesn’t work. It’s challenging when you are trying to make good, interesting stories and everything is so hurried. That’s why working in theatre is so good.”

She was not long out of school when she won her first leading role opposite Richard Beckinsale in ITV’s The Lovers series, followed by an even bigger comedy series Man About the House. They are series which, thanks to the many streaming channels, are still being shown on TV today.

“It’s extraordinary how these series have followed us around all these years,” she says. “Who would have thought that would happen when setting off to do The Lovers in 1970 or something? Years go by and now you can watch on your telly or your phone wherever you want.”

Her ambitions when she starred in The Lovers were simple enough – to keep working and to do theatre. “Acting was all I ever wanted to do but I didn’t come from the sort of background – working class in Manchester – actors came from,” she says.

Joining the National Youth Theatre proved a turning point and she’s pleased to see the way such stage groups for children and young people have bloomed in recent years. “No matter how many channels there are Hull Truck is extraordinary in the way it draws people in. There’s something going on every day for children, youth theatre, baby friendly performances and all sorts of adventures going on,” she says.

To Have and To Hold: Hull Truck Theatre, 1-24 May. Box office 01482 323638 boxoffice@hulltruck.co.uk