...Diane Keen, who plays Denisa Parsons in The Small Hand.


How did you become involved with the play and what attracted you to it, Diane?

“I’ve been trying to work with Bill [producer Bill Kenwright] for a very long time and apparently he’s been trying to work with me for a very long time, and things have come up and they just haven’t worked or it wasn’t right.

“And then my agent rang me one afternoon just as I was going out, telling me he’d sent me an email and it was this script for a new Susan Hill play. My ears pricked up and when they said Bill Kenwright, I thought, ‘Oh my God, two things happening here’! So I got the script the next day and immediately agreed to do it.”


Have you read the book or Susan’s earlier work, The Woman In Black?

“I wasn’t familiar with The Small Hand but I have read The Woman In Black; not seen the show although would very much like to. But I don’t want to see it now before this. Because although it’s of the same genre and the same ilk and following the same style, this play will be very different. This is a very complicated show and, in particularly for me, I’ve got all these women to play, plus a narrator and I’m on and off, on and off, on and off and I’m, ‘who am I now?’! So I really need to focus on that.”


How much of a challenge is playing multiple characters, especially with Denisa being one of the main characters?

“Well, Denisa is and she isn’t. There’s a lot of Alice, Lady Alice; she’s got two big scenes, she’s the one that warns Adam Snow and then we’ve got Jocelyn, Lord McPherson’s private assistant, and she’s quite an important character. Denisa is just, well, she’s… I can’t say without giving too much away. And then there’s the therapist. But Jocelyn’s my favourite.”


Does it feel schizophrenic with all these characters to jump back and forth to?

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to throw off all your costumes that denote who you’re playing and then go and stand and do the narration, which happens in seconds on about three occasions. And then you’ve got to rush and go, “bloody hell, put the coat back on again! Who was I, who was I?” It’s a little bit tough to get my head round.


Have you ever worked with your co-stars Robert Duncan and Andrew Lancel before?

“No. They make good tea though.”


How different is being on stage to being in front of the cameras?

About £5,000 a week! I’m just winding you up. A lot. Everything. You can speak sentences with a look on camera whereas on stage it needs body language and other things as well to be able to portray that. You can whisper something or not have any volume, just say the words and it’ll be picked up by the camera, whereas on stage you have to use a completely different technique. And I have done more camera work than stage work, so I notice it more than people who do theatre a lot.”


Are you a fan of ghost stories or the horror genre?

“Er, not really! The Woman In Black was on Sky and I wouldn’t watch it. I was so scared because I live on my own and thought, ‘Oh no, I can’t watch that’; even if it’s 11 o’clock in the morning, I can’t watch it. It’ll scare me when I go to bed! I do watch some, but with fingers over my eyes when it gets to a really scary bit.”