“We don’t want to admit that there are some things so terrible that, if they happen to us, we will be sad forever.”
It was Amanda Abbington as viewers had never seen her before – with eyes full of tears and an American accent that scarcely slipped. The ex-Strictly star, also known for her BBC roles in Sherlock and Mr Selfridge, was playing distraught Pennsylvanian mum Tara, struggling to console her panicking young daughter after she was brutally raped in her New York apartment.
Against the backdrop of her real-life Strictly withdrawal and account of suffering trauma and PTSD, the heart-wrenching scenes could almost be mistaken for Amanda talking to her own wounded inner child. However, in an exclusive chat with Express.co.uk at the afterparty at the Park Theatre bar, she had set the record straight – that she never allows reality and her work to blend.
Instead, she committed herself to honour the story of writer Tawni O’Dell, whose real-life pain at seeing her daughter’s life ripped apart by rape brought back memories of the sex attack she’d suffered herself at a similar age. Casting her own personal heartache aside, Amanda threw herself into the role.
While the BBC investigation into Giovanni Pernice’s behaviour rages on, Amanda is bringing Tawni’s memory of her daughter’s ordeal onstage. There was a suspenseful silence a third of the way into the play as she exclaimed: “Closure! That’s a nice word [to use] in the hope of convincing ourselves there’s nothing out there we can’t get over.”
Fired up, Amanda continued: “Closure implies a door firmly shut, but it isn’t a closed door for everyone. It opened ones my daughter hadn’t even noticed there were before.
“That’s because the crime doesn’t fade over time – it metastasises.”
Then the silence was broken by ominous music echoing out across the theatre.
Amanda’s impeccably executed lines interspersed tearful outbursts that held viewers’ hearts under arrest with light-hearted moments of comedy which shouldn’t have fit in the scene but somehow did.
She was portraying every aspect of Tawni’s life – from tragedy to triumph, from angry arguments to love and laughter, wanting to display that there was a multifaceted human being behind the trauma.
Her co-star Rosie Day, playing Tara’s daughter Esme, did a brilliant job too, perfectly conveying both the essence of furious teenage tantrums and the momentary fragility of a trauma survivor.
Chameleonic Tok Stephen’s facial expressions were always on point too, as he took on multiple roles from a police officer to a $300 per-hour therapist during the course of the show.
Meanwhile, Amanda displayed remarkable strength throughout, with her main aim to do justice to the character, knowing that there was a real-life story behind it.
She told Express: “It’s very important to me… to speak for women who haven’t got any voice.”
This play is an opportunity for fans of her career to see her in an up close and personal setting, quite different from the distance created by a BBC show watched by millions of people per week – and it shouldn’t be missed.
When It Happens To You runs at the Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park until August 31, with tickets available here.