Tara Fitzgerald is heading for York in the RSC’s touring production of The Winter’s Tale. It’s a ‘problem’ play and that’s what she likes about it, reports CHARLES HUTCHINSON

THE Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of The Winter’s Tale marks two firsts.

The Stratford-upon-Avon company will be making its debut at the Grand Opera House in York later this month, while Brassed Off star Tara Fitzgerald is breaking her RSC duck in Lucy Bailey’s cast in the role of the pregnant, abused Hermione.

“I’d never seen the play and didn’t know what to expect, but Hermione’s key speech is one of those you’re forced to do at drama school,” says the Sussex actress, after a matinee performance during the production’s initial run at the RSC’s headquarters last month.

“But it’s an amazing play, such an incredible play, the favourite of the ones I’ve read – and it’s a mature piece; it feels fully realised.”

Ultimately it may be a tale of reconciliation and forgiveness, but it is brutal, especially when Jo Stone-Fewings’s all-powerful but jealous Leontes punches pregnant wife Hermione in the stomach, believing her to have been unfaithful.

“It’s a violent play; a play about violence and what violence can do,” says Tara. “You have to approach it in different ways and people will see different things in it.

“I know people have played safe in the past, playing Leontes as jealous and dissembling from the start, but in this production, that jealousy is only signified when Leontes says, ‘It’s too hot’. That’s the notion of jealousy, the most destructive emotion, and when it goes, boy it goes.”

Tara challenges the perception that Hermione’s position is weak from the start. “They had great equality in their relationship. I didn’t see her as subservient, only in terms of the conditions she faced,” she says. “I see her as a compassionate, forgiving woman.”

The Winter’s Tale is only her second Shakespeare performance, her first being Ophelia in Hamlet for the Almeida Theatre and on Broadway. This may seem surprisingly few in a prolific career on stage and screen, and her RSC debut is surely long overdue. “It’s all right, Shakespeare!” she jokes. “You can’t do better and the RSC is an amazing place to work in.”

Tara acknowledges she has not been knocking on the RSC’s door, but nor has the RSC been knocking on hers. “You’ll have to ask them why I haven’t been asked before,” she says, without any bitterness in her voice.

Instead, she prefers to relish the opportunity that has come her way at the age of 45. “It’s been fantastic working with Lucy [director Lucy Bailey], who has such amazing ideas,” says Tara.

After appearing in such plays as Broken Glass, The Misanthrope, A Doll’s House, A Streetcar Named Desire, Antigone and Our Song, she now finds herself in one of Shakespeare plays that is always prefaced by the word ‘problem’.

“All plays have problems. That’s what you’re solving,” says Tara. “But Lucy has been very clever in making the schism a class schism rather than a country schism, if you accept that Bohemia is as important as Sicilia in the play.”

For all the suffering experienced by Hermione, The Winter’s Tale is proving a winter and now spring of contentment for Tara. “I like the play because it has beautiful language and seems very true and accurate and incredibly modern… and maybe I admire it because it is a problem play,” she says.

Will Tara be seen more often on stage from now on, especially in Shakespeare plays? “I don’t know. Hopefully. I’d like to. It’s in the lap of Apollo really, but no, I haven’t given up on the screen career,” she says, without mentioning her upcoming role in Sky Atlantic’s American epic fantasy Game Of Thrones. “The [stage and screen] careers cross-fertilise.”

• Tara Fitzgerald has appeared in such television series as Waking The Dead and The Camomile Lawn and among her films are Brassed Off, The Englishman Who Went Up The Hill But Came Down A Mountain, Sirens and Hear My Song.

• The Royal Shakespeare Company presents The Winter’s Tale at Grand Opera House, York, March 19 to 23 and Hull New Theatre, April 9 to 13. Box office: York, 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york; Hull, 01482 300300 or hullcc.gov.uk/hullnewtheatre