Theatre
The daughter of the Scottish music hall comedian and actor Johnny Beattie, Maureen Beattie was raised in Glasgow (she was born during a summer season in Bundoran, County Donegal). She
trained for the stage at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and gained her early experience in variety at Perth and repertory at Dundee. It was only at the end of her twenties that she started to achieve recognition.Two roles for Michael Boyd were particularly significant Emilia in Othello at the Lyric Hammersmith (1984), and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Tron, Glasgow (1985).Maureen compelled attention, and not simply because her eyes, for a brunette, were so nakedly blue: her appealing Scottish voice was at ease with Shakespeare's verse.
From Shakespeare and Ancient Greece to 1940's USA,
you can find news and reviews on many of the plays Maureen was cast in and others she has directed.
With a passion for theatre, be it taking on lead roles to directing plays such as a low-key rehearsed reading for Edinburgh's Stellar Quines at the Traverse Theatre, Maureen wants it to be the start of something serious.
"The actors' performances are in your hands, so you've got to give
it everything you've got," she says. "So I take it very seriously, yes, and it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time."
The play, Perfect Pie, by Canadian Judith Thompson, is about two women looking back on their childhood and unearthing an old
secret about a rape. Described by one critic as "Canadian Gothic", it is typical of the writer's dark, emotionally taxing work. Being about women of her age,Beattie had an instinctive feel for it and an immediate sense of the actors she'd like to cast.
Directing is uncharted territory, however, so she will be drawing on over 30 years in the profession to guide her. She has worked with all manner of directors and has learned from the bad as well as the good.Maureen was first at the RSC in 1988-89, playing, with typical elan, Lady Lurewell in The Constant Couple (Roger Michell, Swan);
Lady Macduff in Macbeth (Adrian Noble, RST, Barbican); Pert in The Man of Mode (Garry Hynes, Swan, Pit);
Cordelia in King Lear (Cicely Berry, TOP);
Maggie Cutler in The Man Who Came to Dinner (Gene Saks, Barbican);
Mary Burns in Frank McGuinness's Mary and Lizzie (Sarah Pia Anderson, Pit).
She was a sinister White Witch in the 2001 Sadler's Wells revival of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Noble),
Stratford for the 2003 season:
Queen Elizabeth in Richard III (Sean Holmes, RST), and a ferocious Tamora in Titus Andronicus, (Bill Alexander, RST).
Elsewhere, since 1990:
Kate in The Taming of the Shrew (Mark Brickman, Sheffield Crucible, 1990);
Elmire in Tartuffe (Lou Stein, Palace Theatre, Watford, 1990);
The title role in John Clifford's Ines de Castro (Ian Brown, Riverside Studios, 1991);
Ruby in David Ashton's The Chinese Wolf (Dominic Dromgoole, Bush, 1993);
Klaus Pohl's Waiting Room Germany (Mary Peate, Royal Court, 1995);
Mistress Page in Terry Hands's The Merry Wives of Windsor (NT Olivier, 1995);
Damon in Damon and Pythias (Globe, 1996);
Emilia in Sam Mendes's Othello (NT Cottesloe, 1997);
Hester in The Deep Blue Sea (Dana Fainaru, Nottingham Playhouse, 2000);
Magnificent as Medea (Graham McLaren, Theatre Babel, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Festival, 2000);
Peter Gill's Small Change (Rufus Norris, Sheffield Crucible,2002);
David Troughton as Ma in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (David Lan, Young Vic, 2004).
