I nudge the recording device a bit closer to Patsy Ferran as we chat under the bright lights of the National Theatre foyer. The Olivier award-winning actor is an electric presence on stage – a performer you cannot bear to stop watching – but she is surprisingly softly spoken in person. We are here to talk about her star turn as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire – a role that Ferran sheepishly admits she never imagined playing.
“I saw Blanche as uber-feminine, conventionally attractive, overly sexual and light,” Ferran says. “Very light. I think I have those qualities in my own way, but they’re much more leftfield.”
