YORK actor-musician Lauryn Redding is returning to her home city to appear in the week-long run of Birmingham Stage Company’s latest Horrible Histories tour.

Making her Horrible Histories debut, she will play Maisie in The Awful Egyptians and Ethel and Boudicca in The Ruthless Romans in a year-long commitment to the productions.

“We started rehearsals the day after Boxing Day, rehearsing in London for four weeks, and then we started the tour in Horsham, and I don’t finish until December, though we have a break over the summer for just over eight weeks, to get a rest or maybe getting something short and sweet to do,” says Lauryn.

“The previous tours I’ve done have been over three or fourth months, but I know this one is going to be a lot of fun for the rest of the year.”

Her role as Maisie in The Awful Egyptians finds her playing a 12-year-old schoolgirl.

“She goes on a school trip to a museum for a day, and she’s just a typical bored teenager – though I would say I was a pretty excitable as a teenager myself – but then the museum comes alive around her and so she gets taken into the Egyptian world and learns about it in a more exciting way than in the guide books,” says Lauryn.

“Maisie is essentially the eyes for the children in the audience. She learns how to build pyramids; she helps to mummify a body; she gets lost in a maze – yes ‘Maisie in a maze’ is mentioned a lot! – and she learns about the Pharaohs too.”

Look out for the scarab (dung) beetles when the 3D special effects come into play. “It really is a spectacle,” promises Lauryn. “It’s the only time I’ve seen 3D being used to really good purpose that’s integral to the show.”

In The Ruthless Romans, her principal character of Ethel is a peasant girl who owns a farm.

“The Romans want to try to build a road over it as they don’t want the road to become bendy,” she says. “Ethel is having none of it, so she’s transported to Rome, where she has to fight gladiators in the Colosseum, but she manages to fight her way free and somehow gets back to Britannia on a boat to reclaim her farm, having learnt things from the Romans that she uses to defeat them.”

Lauryn studied at Manor C of E School in York, followed by York College, where a BTec course in acting gave her the bug for a stage career. She appeared in York Light Opera Company productions of Annie and Scrooge and while she attended drama school at Rose Bruford College in London, she also took the opportunity to work behind the bar and usher at York Theatre Royal.

She made her professional debut at Theatre Clwyd Cymru in Tall Tales, and her future dream role would be either Nancy in Oliver!, Meat in We Will Rock You or Mrs Johnston in Blood Brothers. “Horrible Histories will be my first time at the Grand Opera House; next time it’s got to be the Theatre Royal, then I can tick them both off,” she says.

• Horrible Histories, The Awful Egyptians and The Ruthless Romans, Grand Opera House, York, from Tuesday to Saturday. 0844 847 2322 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk