Messing about in Kingston

Jan 14 2009 By Mark Goode, Surrey Herald

Voice impressions of people from all over the world has always come easy for ex-Emmerdale star Emma Atkins.

The soap actress, who played Charity Tate between 2000 and 2005, is featuring in a modern replication of 1970s radio show Stop Messing About, which is at the Rose Theatre in Kingston next week.

She plays Joan Sims' character, mimicking more than 100 voices and Emma believes her ability to do the impressions stems from when she was 11. Her dad used to hand her newspapers and ask her to replicate accents to make him laugh.

She says: "He would say read it out in a Welsh accent or a Liverpudlian accent, and it made him chuckle. We had a nice time together and thinking back it was really nice that he took time out to unintentionally to teach me. Even now when I go to see him, we will be sitting at the table and he will ask me to do impressions."

The play is written by Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer, who wrote the original sketch show, starring Kenneth Williams. The play is a stage show version, and will feature some of the same satirical sketches.

While Emma imitates Joan, there are three other actors who will be doing the same to the show's previous stars Kenneth, Hugh Paddick and Douglas Smith.

She says: "It doesn't feel like work because it's so much fun. I have been doing lots of research and watching everything I can on Joan, and got a sense of her interior qualities.

"I don't want to be just mimicking her, but she has one of the most amazing voices and she can do so many accents. I spend a lot of time in my home practising alone or with my boyfriend, and it's a lot of fun. If as an actress I had to say I had a forte, it would be doing voices."

Emma is probably best known for her role in Emmerdale, which she got six months before finishing her acting degree at Salford University in Manchester.

After finishing secondary school she worked with her parents - who are wallpaper designers - for three years and then suddenly decided to become an actress.

She says: "When I was young I was always in amateur productions but I went to a Catholic estate school and we never had theatre lessons, so I never thought it was a career option. Then when I was working with my parents I thought I'd go for it and applied to drama schools, and the only one who took me in was Salford."

Emma adds she felt quite lucky getting a job in TV, but says the experience of being stopped in the street by strangers always felt strange.

* Stop Messing About is being staged at the Rose Theatre from Wednesday, January 21 to Saturday, January 24. Tickets, which cost between £7 and £24, are available from the box office on 0871 230 1552.