Communicating Doors, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates until October 8 (From York Press)

Communicating Doors, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates until October 8

3:37pm Monday 9th August 2010 in

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ALAN Ayckbourn offered Laura Doddington her latest stage role at an after-show party.

“He has a tendency to do that to me,” says Laura. “At the opening night of Man Of The Moment last summer [at the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton], he said to me, ‘Have a look at Communicating Doors. I think there could be a role for you in there’.

“So I knew a year ago that I would be doing it in Scarborough, and it’s lovely to be back here.”

‘Here’ is the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where Laura last appeared in January 2006 as the Grand Vizier’s ambitious daughter, Murganah, in Ayckbourn’s family drama The Champion Of Paribanou.

Earlier, she had played troubled teen rebel Tammy Laidlaw in Ayckbourn’s time-travelling play Miss Yesterday in December 2004 and starred as shy Isla in another Ayckbourn premiere, Improbable Fiction, in June 2005, going on tour with the show down south after its SJT run.

This summer, Scarborough audiences can enjoy Laura in the role of a dominatrix, the wonderfully named call-girl Ms Poupée Desir, who must run for her life – backwards – in Ayckbourn’s revival of his 1994 film-noir comedy thriller Communicating Doors.

It is a demanding role, and not only physically (Laura says she has been working out at a gym). “It’s been quite difficult to learn,” she reveals. “Lots of his plays are easier to learn but the first part of Communicating Doors is plot based with time travel in it.”

Laura is playing Poupee with an Essex accent. “That was my decision, though it’s s kind of indicated in the script, and I sensed that because my Trudy in Man Of The Moment was an Essex girl too, and we’d talked about me doing Communicating Doors, it would be right again…and Alan didn’t stop me!” she says.

“Though I remember reading for the role in Improbable Fiction with a Welsh accent when he said, ‘Very good, but not Welsh, Laura, not Welsh’!”

How did she turn herself into a dominatrix? “With lots of imagination,” she says. “Luckily I don’t have to do any dominatrix things on stage! I just have to wear the outfit….I didn’t choose it, but it is fantastic!”

Her role travels back through time from war-torn 2030. “She’s a broken woman emotionally but a chance meeting in 2010 brings out who she really is and shows the potential of who she could be – and shows how we can change our lives from one chance meeting and the choices we make,” she says.

Laura’s career path at Scarborough is a case in point. “I got my first audition here for I Ought To Be In Pictures because a girl dropped out and I was on the reserve list,” she recalls. “I’d been out of college for a year and done radio repertory for the BBC for six months, but I hadn’t had an audition for a while, so when I went to the Scarborough one, I was thinking, ‘Maybe this career is not for me’.”

Nevertheless, Laurie Sansom duly chose her for his cast, ironically in the role of a wannabe actress; Ayckbourn was impressed and so began a fruitful theatre relationship that will continue with Laura’s appearance as a trophy wife in his 74th play, Life Of Riley, from September 16.

“I’m one of the luckiest actors around, working on a new Alan Ayckbourn play,” says Laura. “It’s amazing; you sit in rehearsal, thinking ‘I’m sitting here with the man who wrote this’. You can try things and get things wrong, but knowing the playwright is there, it’s a joy and a privilege to be with him.”

Communicating Doors, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, on various dates until October 8. Box office: 01723 370541.