The poet TS Eliot described Marie Lloyd as “the greatest music hall artist of all time”. Elizabeth Mansfield, long cherished in York for her diverse performances at the Theatre Royal, first played the riotous, irrepressible yet anguished Marie in 1987 at Leeds City Varieties, later taking the piece to Colorado and Ibsen’s home town in Norway.

In 1996, she received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical, pitched against A Little Night Music at the National Theatre, when Steve Trafford’s musical play transferred to a Sunday run at the Fortune Theatre, London.

Now Elizabeth and partner Steve, York Theatre Royal and Ensemble are re-mounting Marie, wherein the star of the late-Victorian and Edwardian era heroically strikes out against the hypocrisy of her day. Charles Hutchinson catches up with Elizabeth as she rediscovers the joys of Don’t Dilly Dally On The Way, ahead of the autumn tour’s opening night in York on Thursday.

What made you take on the tour-de-force role of Marie Lloyd once more, Elizabeth?

“It’s still very popular and people still love it. We had first started again in 2000 with a new production directed by Annie Castledine, which was very different in feel. There was a different conceit to it, which was Annie’s idea, where Marie was conjured up by a modern-day pianist as a ghostly apparition.

“What that show didn’t have going for it – though it did have the songs – was that everything was put in the past, but this version, the original one that we took into the West End, is more rough and ready.

“There’s an immediacy to it, so you watch Marie disintegrating before your eyes; it’s in the present and it’s happening right there.

“Annie’s production was very elegant, and it looked beautiful with the most wonderful design by Richard Aylwin , but this one captures the sweat and sawdust of music hall.”

In rehearsal, has it felt like pulling on familiar old clothes?

“The costumes this time are the ones designed for the original production by Sheila Godbolt, so they’re not old but they do have an old feel to them. They’re an absolute friend; one of the things I love about the show is that Marie is transferring herself effortlessly into these different costumes and characters, so it feels like a continuum and it’s lovely to be doing that again.”

What do you love about playing Marie Lloyd?

“I love her vigour and her honesty and her passion for life against all the odds, and what’s fascinating about her is that she was the first great superstar for workers of the industrial revolution, when music hall was born out of everyone flooding into the city.

“What I also love about the play is how it charts the structure of music hall, its rise and fall and ties that to what’s fascinating about Marie’s life, like how she led the great music hall strike of 1907 to improve the lot of those at the bottom of the bill.”

How would you describe Marie Lloyd’s stage personality?

“She was considered too risqué for the Queen so she wasn’t invited to perform at the first Royal Command Performance, although she was the biggest star of the time… but TS Eliot said she was the most perfect actress of her type with nothing vulgar about her.

“Underlying everything about her was her great sense of fun.

“She was very funny, and Steve’s script is packed with those wonderful one-liners. Each time I do it, I think, ‘oh, here comes another ace’.”

Marie died at 52, so when you first played her there was a considerable age difference. Does it feel different playing her again, 21 years on from your first performance?

“I’m now the right age to play the role. When I started I was 20 years too young and though I understood the piece, and the lines, intellectually, I do feel I understand her more fully this time. I start at the end of her life, so I don’t have to struggle against that thing of a younger person playing an older person playing a younger person. And I’ve had my own experiences, my losses, like Marie had, in ways that I hadn’t had when I was younger.”

What most excites you about reacquainting yourself with Marie Lloyd?

“Little touches change in the script, but it’s more about how you play it. That’s what is so clever about Steve’s writing. He touches on Marie’s pain and agony, though she wasn’t one to visit it herself, but it catches up with her, and I have to say I’m very excited about revisiting those moments – and it’ll be great doing the show in The Studio at the Theatre Royal.

“I’ve done it in different spaces over the years, from studios to the Hackney Empire, and what you have in a studio is intimacy, so you’re right there wherever she wants to be with the audience.

“As you watch, you become her confidante, and of course that was her big skill, even in the big theatres. Everyone felt she was speaking to them and was like a friend. Everyone talked of her as ‘our Marie’, and we don’t have that any more in our theatres.

“So that’s another reason for revisiting this character, who was all about contact, communication and people coming together to have fun, whereas now we’re in an age of technology and have become more and more separate from each other.”

• Marie, The Story Of Marie Lloyd, starring Elizabeth Mansfield, accompanied by pianist Stephen Rose, runs in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, from September 4 to 13. Performances: 7.45pm plus 2pm matinees on September 11 and 13. Tickets: 01904 623568