Although she has been asked to return many times, Jane Seymour has not been on stage since 1980, when she performed opposite Ian McKellen and Tim Curry in the Tony Award-winning Amadeus. But this is all about to change when she takes on the role of Florence Lancaster in the Noël Coward play “The Vortex,” which opens later this week in Singapore.Seymour is best known for her work on screen, especially the hugely successful “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” in the 1990s for which she won a Golden Globe, but like many British actors of her generation she had a grounding in the theater. “I didn’t know the play, but when I read it, it was so impactful for me that I thought if there was going to be a vehicle for me to come back, The Vortex was it,” she says, adding the opportunity to join the short run in Southeast Asia offered freedom to experiment and “see how much I like it. I can do it for two and a half weeks. If I don’t like doing theater, I’ll never do it again, but if I do, I open up a whole new world for myself, because I’m always asked in London or New York to do theater.”There was also an element of good-natured family pressure, too. “My daughter [Katie Flynn] who is an actress and my boyfriend [David Green] who is a director producer, both told me I had to do it. They kind of kicked me out of the nest. They told me ‘you’re at the peak of your ability, now is the time to push yourself even further.’ And they were right because I’ve loved the rehearsal process,” she says. First performed in 1924, “The Vortex,” with its theme of infidelity and barely veiled references to homosexuality and drug addiction, scandalized London society at the time, and became an immediate box office success, launching Coward’s career.“It has everything that you expect and want from a Noel Coward play, the frivolity, the fun, the 1920s, the kind of whole craziness, and all the comedy, but it also has a very deep side to it,” explains Seymour, “He wrote it for himself, and he wrote it about himself, I’m sure.”Seymour met Coward once, briefly in 1973 at a matinee performance of Terence Rattigan’s Midnight that she was watching with her then boyfriend, Michael Attenborough. “We were sitting on the side, towards the front and at the last minute before they turned the lights off, they wheeled Noël in. Michael immediately told him ‘Noël, I’m your godson,’ and he said ‘You’ve changed since the font!’ and then because his voice was so recognizable, the man in front of us turned around and said in this very pretentious voice, ‘Noël, how ARE you,’ and Noël replied, ‘dying!’ and he did die a few weeks later.”While it is not performed as often as other Coward plays, Seymour is confident the themes will resonate with a modern audience, especially her character’s quest for youth. “I think the play is still incredibly appropriate for today. How many women around the world, and men, are trying to be younger … 60 is the new 40, and 50 is the new 30, it’s going to be 80 is the new birth soon” she says with a laugh adding, “Everybody is trying to fight to keep their youth, both physically, emotionally, and mentally, and here is a woman who emotionally feels like a young woman inside, but she’s no longer young and she’s supposed to get old with her husband, retire. She wants to be the life and soul of London, and she is, she’s the celebrated Flo Lancaster and she doesn’t want to give that up.”The rehearsal process has been “an amazing learning experience,” she says and she is full of praise for her co-stars James Cartwright and Alex Spinney and director Bob Tomson. “I’d forgotten how much I liked doing live theater. Of course we haven’t had an audience yet. We’ve only had one day where we’ve invited our friends and families, and they were sitting right in front of the stage, so it’s still not quite like having a real audience.”Seymour continues to regularly appear on screen, though often in smaller parts, such as a demanding dance instructor in the just released dance movie “High Strung” (which she co-produced) and as the racist mother of the main protagpnist in Marlon Wayans’s “50 Shades of Black,” a spoof of “50 Shades of Gray.”“It’s very hard for a woman of my age to be in a lead role,” she says, noting that theater offers a new avenue for her talent. “With the theater it’s not about the camera seeing everything about yourself, you can play younger, you can play older; you can do a lot of different things, because you’re further away. And there are some great roles for older people. That said, I’m 65 and Florence Lancaster is probably in her 50s, so I’m still playing much younger that I already am. But as Florence Lancaster proves, age is just the way you feel inside.”Seymour has just finished shooting the independent film “Mistrust,” reuniting with William Shockley, whom she played opposite in Dr. Quinn. “I’m playing the lead, a woman who can only be a mistress. She doesn’t trust being in any other relationship. I thought she was interesting, because there are woman like that, who can’t get married. She has all her rules about how the relationship should work. That’s not me, again, but I’m curious about the mindset of different women at different stages in their life.”Later this year, she will appear in “Hooten & the Lady,” a new eight-part British television series with Michael Landes (CSI) and Ophelia Lovibond (Elementary), playing Lady Tabitha Lindo-Parker , the mother of Lovibond’s character, “a crazy, over the top and very funny character.”She’s also planning to produce a movie, “in which there will be a great role for me. But I don’t want to talk about it yet."Produced by British Theatre Playhouse, The Vortex runs April 27‑May 15 at the Jubilee Hall Theatre, Raffles Hotel.
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