Interview: Neve McIntosh of NYTW's THE EVENTS and DOCTOR WHO

Scottish actress Neve McIntosh is working in the United States for the first time, but she came here with a ready-made fan base. The London resident, currently starring in The Events at New York Theater Workshop, has had a recurring role on cult TV fave Doctor Who since 2010, with Tumblr and Facebook pages devoted to her character, the lizard-like Madame Vastra.

McIntosh has costarred in a number of other British TV shows, among them the 2000 miniseries Gormenghast, and has also been a regular on U.K. stages, including the Royal Shakespeare Company. She previously performed in The Events in both London and Edinburgh, where it premiered at the Festival Fringe in 2013. A multinational production--developed by the Britain-based Actors Touring Company in conjunction with Norwegian and Austrian theaters in addition to London's Young Vic--The Events was inspired by the 2011 mass shooting of 69 young people at a Labor Party-affiliated summer camp in Norway by the xenophobic/anti-progressive Anders Breivik (who also bombed a government building, killing eight people). McIntosh plays Claire, a lesbian clergywoman and director of a choir that was targeted in a massacre, who is struggling with both her grief and her attempt to understand what would drive someone to commit such an act. The perpetrator (identified in the script simply as the Boy)--or Claire's vision of him--is portrayed by British actor Clifford Samuel, who performed in The Events when it toured the U.K. last year.

Prior to New York, McIntosh hadn't been in the show since it played the Young Vic in the fall of 2013. She had just passed her 100th performance (counting the London and Edinburgh runs) when she recently sat down with BroadwayWorld in the NYTW offices to talk about acting in various countries, becoming a sci-fi icon, and being part of The Events--whose cast is filled out by a different local community choir at each performance. The choir, standing in for Claire's choir, sings several songs; select choir members also perform speaking duties in a few scenes, including interrogating the Boy with "frequently asked questions" about his personal tastes and beliefs. The play is scheduled to run at the East Village theater until March 22; click here for more information and tickets.

You have a long history with the Events author, David Grieg, right?
I've known David for years. I did one of his plays at the RSC, Victoria, at the Pit at the Barbican and a couple of rehearsed readings at the Traverse. We actually used to know each other in a youth theater when we were 16 years old in Edinburgh.

You grew up in Edinburgh?
I did. Both my parents are from there, and we moved back there when I was about 7 or 8. So I probably had a love of theater, or being an actress, because every year [during the Fringe] the city came alive with music and all these exotic people from around the world and street theater and stuff.

Was The Events the first show you ever did at the Fringe?
Two years prior I did a version of Three Women, which was originally written as a radio play by Sylvia Plath. It's about three different women and their view on children and childbirth and being pregnant--one that can't stop having children, one who's lost her umpteenth child, and one who's scared because it's her first one and she's quite young.
That was [my] professional [debut at the Fringe], but before that the youth theater [I was in] always put something on.

How involved were you in helping to shape this play when it originated in Edinburgh?
We had to spend the entire first week cutting it down. There were a hundred and forty or fifty pages; we had to cut it down to just over an hour for the Fringe. It was only then it started to take shape, and we'd muck about with the way the play's put together. The retelling of "the events" itself used to happen at the beginning--we always call that pages 1 to 9--and that happens much later now.

According to the program notes, your character was inspired by a person David and director Ramin Gray met in Norway--a female vicar who ran a community choir, just like Claire. Have you met her?
No. I would like to, but you don't want to see the reality of what you've got in your imagination, because you don't want anything spoiled in a way. I think Claire's quite different from her anyway. I'd like to meet everyone, actually, that inspired Claire, because she was also inspired by survivors. Maybe one day.

What else is there to know about Claire that isn't revealed on stage?
One thing you don't know is about her faith and the religion--all you see is the collar. In Edinburgh there was a lovely little Episcopalian Church of Scotland church on my way to the theater, so I used to pop in there and soak up the atmosphere. In the Church of Scotland, Episcopalian, you don't have to believe in heaven, but you definitely have to believe in hell. Claire is going through hell. She's someone who always knew who she was from a fairly early age--that she was deeply Christian and her sexuality. She's never had too much of a struggle with who she is or what she wants and what she gets, and that's a massive slam when what happens happens. She's going one step at a time. I think she's one of the most honest characters I've ever played. She means everything she says. "I need to know," it's as simple as that, and she's so consumed with what she needs to find out.

How much research did you do on the real "events" the play is based on?
Lots and lots. There's always certain sensational aspects you get from the news, and then you go and delve in. There's tons of stuff on what Breivik did [prior to the massacre] and how everyone then just denied it. His manifesto is still online--there's a whole section that we put in the FAQs, and some of them are really banal. It's one of the most extraordinary things...delusional people who think that what they're doing is so right. But we all think that, so you question yourself: How far would I go to do what I think is right? It's one of those things that keeps on happening: Copenhagen last week. It seemed while we were rehearsing, while we were doing the play, something was happening--the Boston bombings--and you just [wonder], Will it ever stop? Anything that comes up, if Ramin or any of us spot it, we just email the links to everyone. There was recently a brilliant piece by the father of a Sandy Hook [victim]--he's written a book.

Have any survivors or relatives of victims of the Norway events come to see the show?
I think a few people came to see it in Norway. I wasn't in it there. We had a member of a choir when we were at the Young Vic in London and she had a friend who was in the shopping center in Nairobi. That brought a lot to the fore. She hadn't heard [by showtime]--she didn't know if her friend was alive or dead. There were reports on the news, bodies lying around. She still went and did the show, god love her.

Have you found doing the play here much different from the U.K.?
It's not too much of an adjustment. We're used to just two stage management people, so we've got a lot more people helping us.

What about the audiences?
Audiences are a wee bit more chatty in New York than in London. In London if they're talking, you think you've lost the audience, but here some people are whispering and discussing [the play]. But in London they cough more, and you get more mobile phones going off.

Had you been to the States before coming here to do The Events?
I first came to New York about a year ago, just before Christmas, for a week's holiday. A friend was in one of the Globe shows, so I stayed with him, did all my Christmas shopping.

Is there any rehearsal with the choirs?
What we call a "Super Sunday": Every Sunday afternoon, straight after the show, Magnus [Gilljam, the pianist] takes all the choirs that we're going to have for the next week for one huge musical rehearsal. The choirs don't get all the script; they get the cues and when they need to stand, when they need to sit. And at 6:00 [the evening of an 8:00 show] Clifford and I come in and we run through all of that with them, and we do bits to show them physically where we'll be. Their FAQs, Clifford doesn't get to see that before, so it's all fresh to him; he doesn't know where anyone is.

Have there been any snafus with the choirs?
Oh, pretty much all the time. Just last night, the woman who reads the bonobos speech was so into watching what was going on, she forgot she was supposed to come up next. So we're like frozen in time and can't move, [thinking] Hurry up, my legs are cracking... Some people come back [in another choir] and they start to try to act a bit more. A couple of times we've had people sitting there and they go, "I know what I'm saying for the FAQs," and they put the book down and get up, and by the time that they're at the microphone, they've got no idea [what they're supposed to say] and they make something random up. So you've just got to be ready for anything.

Were you able to jump right back into the role after not doing it for over a year?
I thought I could. It's such a different dynamic with Clifford, I'm glad we had previews here first. We really had about only two weeks [rehearsal]. The thing about working with a new actor, both Clifford and I had to forget the other people and the way that they did it. So there was a lot of "renegotiating," because a move on a line becomes so ingrained and you don't realize you can try it another way. Some things you go around--try it out and come right back to where it was right in the first place; others it's like, "Oh my god, why was I just treading the same way?"

Do you prefer nonconventional plays like this?
I do like straight stuff, but I prefer it in a way. There's a freedom to it that's fantastic--it means that nothing's set in stone. Every time we go on and do this play, we're not quite sure where it's going to take us, emotionally or physically. Sometimes it can go off on a tangent the wrong way, and you've got to get it back.

What is your past experience with "experimental" theater?
One of the very first jobs I ever did, with Michael Boyd--he used to run the RSC, and he used to run the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, where I trained--[was an adaptation of] a book by Janice Galloway called The Trick Is to Keep Breathing, about a woman being fragmented into a deep depression, a psychotic break, by the death of her lover. We helped create that, and it was very much microphones and lots of different media and using three actresses for the three voices of this woman.

Let's discuss Doctor Who! Matt Smith was playing the Doctor when you first appeared on the show. Now your fellow Scotsman Peter Capaldi is. Did you already know him?
Yeah, on one of my very first TV jobs, called Psychos, I worked with him and his wife, Elaine [Collins]. Elaine was a regular, and we managed to get him in to a guest appearance in the sixth and final episode.

So, for non-Whovians, tell us about your role.
The first time I was in it, I played twin sisters, these Silurians. Madame Vastra turns up first when Matt Smith's Doctor goes back in time--or forward in time--to find all these people he needs to help him in this big battle coming. When I got phoned [about the role and told] they want you back, I said, "I'm dead. Twice I died." "No, no, no, it's fine." They kind of made up that all female Silurians seem to look like me. As long as they keep writing Silurian stories, I'm fine! So there are all these little pods of Silurians under the earth. Madame Vastra was discovered in the London Underground. You discover me with my maid, who's actually my lover--and also like my Robin, if I were Batman--and you see us packing up the swords, and we're in Victorian gear. We end up with a Sontaran, who joins us as a sort of butler and a warrior. So we're this threesome helping the Doctor to fight evil and weirdness in the universe. Someone said--I don't know if it's true--that it's the first married lesbian couple in sci-fi history. We turned up on Christmas and all of a sudden we're married. I go to conventions, and I get women couples coming up in cosplay dressed as me and my wife, which is lovely.

What is it like going from toiling away in theater to being seen on a worldwide TV phenomenon?
It's so much fun, I have to say. I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was a wee girl. [Now there are] T-shirts with my face on it. When I did Gormenghast, all of a sudden my face was everywhere and people would come up to you. What's lovely about [my Doctor Who role] is because I'm so covered, I can walk past anyone in the street--it might be one of my biggest fans but they might not recognize. So I can still jump on the Underground in London. It's not the likes of Matt and [previous Doctor] David Tennant. I worked with him after he'd done Doctor Who and he had a little trick of the way that he wore his baseball cap [to obscure his face] because he would just get swamped.

You have a new TV series in the works, right?
One thing that's just about to come out in the U.K. on Sky1--I know it's going to come out in the States, but I don't know when--is called Critical, and it's about a trauma team in a hospital. It stars Lennie James from The Walking Dead. I play this quite strict nurse consultant, who's supposed to be in charge of everything.

Any upcoming feature films?
I did a low-budget film, Social Suicide--I don't know when it'll get seen. We had the wonderful Olivia Hussey and her daughter [India Eisley]. It's a sort of modern take on Romeo and Juliet...a suicide pact between teenagers, and it's all done through social media. I play a detective.

The Events photos by Matthew Murphy. Doctor Who photo by Adrian Rogers.