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A conversation with John Glavin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Your career has been uniquely associated with Dickens's work. You have performed Dickens on the radio, on film, and on the stage. Is there a Dickens character that you would like to play that you haven't yet done?
Yes, I very much want to play Mrs. Gamp.
In the mid-1990s the BBC decided to do Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and the director was Pedr James. I wrote him and I asked if he would interview me. And he said that I wasn't on his list, but he would come and see me in She Stoops to Conquer, which I'd asked him to do. I was playing in London, in the West End, at the time. He came to see it. I was playing Mrs. Hardcastle. And I didn't hear from him again. And then I rang him up, as Mrs. Gamp. I said, “See her again, sweetums.” And he came to the phone and he was amused and he said, “Alright. I'll come and have lunch.” But he said “I think you're too young.”
When I arrived at lunch, the make-up lady was there and he said, “Could you make Miriam up to look the age of Mrs. Gamp, that I think Mrs. Gamp should look, which is about sixty.” Which was about ten years older than I really was at the time. And she said, “Oh yes ! You just do this and this,” and she said what you do. And then we talked.
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