Grease star Stockard Channing has said she has found it a “relief” to be working on a play in London because it is giving her a break from the political upheaval in the United States.
The award-winning actress, who shot to fame as Rizzo in the hit musical in 1978, can be seen playing a liberal matriarch in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Apologia at Trafalgar Studios.
The time she has spent living in the capital while rehearsing for the production has given her a slight reprieve from watching the drama of the Trump administration unfold at home.
“You just get inundated with tweets, it’s a tricky thing to find the dry spots as you negotiate the streams of your life, leaping from stone to stone and that can be quite exhausting.
“And you don’t want to be exhausted because you’ve got to be ready for the next thing. I think we can get really worn out, especially in the States about our stuff and I can imagine a parallel thing happens here.”
Stockard Channing in #Apologia Directed by @LloydJamie opens tomorrow (Sat) @TrafStudios Tickets via https://t.co/a9SGaxui1n pic.twitter.com/opcxLM9A50
— Apologia – The Play (@apologiaplay) July 28, 2017
Channing, who is also well known for playing First Lady Abigail Bartlet in The West Wing, has instead been tuning in to British news and found it a stark contrast to the US cable news channel she watches.
She said: “There has always got to be news so you still get the same amount of hollering and pounding over the head as you do over there on different topics. You really do shout and interrupt each other, it’s amazing.
“I watch a wonderful channel called MSNBC in the States and what I do love is its great live interviews with people, usually congressmen and senators and they are very respectful, they never override each other, it’s the way it is.
Meet our cast…and find out more about this darkly funny play #Apologia Opens 29 July @TrafStudios https://t.co/CO8i6NKmGo @FreemaOfficial
— Apologia – The Play (@apologiaplay) July 18, 2017
“Here they are completely interrupting whoever they are interviewing and hammering them over the head and it’s so different, it’s amazing. Sometimes it’s really steamrolling.”
She added that spending time in the world of the play, which was written by Olivier Award winner Alexi Kaye Campbell, has infected her own subconscious.
She said: “It’s interesting because sometimes it really goes into your unconscious, it goes into your dreams.
“This play is so much about the past and what people think about the past, perceptions of what the reality was.
“I don’t mean to get all spooky about it, but it gets in your imagination.
:: Apologia is at Trafalgar Studios until November 18, with press night on August 3. Tickets are available at atgtickets.com.
