What’s occurring? Only a Gavin and Stacey star visiting Sheringham Little Theatre – retracing her acting past.
BAFTA award winning actor, comedian and writer Ruth Jones was among the audience as a new comedy premiered at the seaside venue. The star, best known for playing Nessa in the hit series, dropped in with actor friend Steve Spiers
The pals have recently worked together on the BBC documentary From Merthyr with Love taking a fun and nostalgic look at his home town of Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales valleys.
Ruth’s trip to the Little Theatre was also a nostalgic one for her as she appeared in two plays at the venue back in the 1993 summer season.
During her visit she said: “I’m so excited to return to Sheringham after all this time. What a wonderful trip down memory lane. I did two plays here in 1993 – thirty two years ago!! Flipping heck. We did John Godber’s Teechers and Alan Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends and it was such great fun”.
“It was a very special time in my life – I was 26 years old and during the run I also auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was the bottom rung of a very long ladder, with one line in All’s Well That Ends Well and lots of understudying.
“The run at Sheringham overlapped with the start of my contract at the RSC so I had three days where I would get up at the crack of sparrow’s, drive to King’s Lynn, get the train to London, rehearse all day, get back on the train, head back to Norfolk and do a performance of Absent Friends!”
She came to Sheringham to see Steve’s son Lewes Roberts perform in a new play he had co-written with Laurence Akers and fellow actor Ryan Starling. The Case of the Three Eyed Elephant traces the origins of legendary detective Sherlock Holmes through the adventures of his author Arthur Conan Doyle.
After the show Ruth added: “I was absolutely gobsmacked by the talent and energy of the show. If anyone needed an advert for live theatre this was it – a truly great experience.”
The show, which has been playing to rave reviews, has now finished its run at Sheringham, but will also be staged at Wolterton Hall near Aylsham on July 26 and Bylaugh Hall near Dereham on July 27 on a mini tour.
