12 hours Ago By Martin Robinson
Victoria Smurfit is returning to the theatre in a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at the Lyric Hammersmith and is still in rehearsals when she talks to the Standard, perfectly calm and not afraid at all at the prospect of being on stage again because it’s only been...
“17 years!” she cries. “I haven’t been on the stage since my third child was born, and he’s nearly 17 years. So it’s been a long time.
The nerves are real...
” Yes they are, so much so the Standard starts to feel nervous too, hearing Smurfit talking about, “being on the edge of a black hole.” She’s being funny about it – this Dublin-born actress is very funny – and at the same is clearly desperate for an audience to finally perform in front of to settle her down. That is, if that audience behave themselves.
“The last thing I was in was at the Olympia in Dublin, a Fiona Looney play, playing [Father Ted actress] Pauline McLynn’s sister,” Smurfit says, “She’s a great comedic writer and we had a very fun audience in the Olympia because it’s usually a music venue, right in the centre of Dublin. Sometimes you’d have people coming in during the show and looking for the bar. We’d have women picking up the phone going, ‘No, I’m just at theatre, watching Mrs Doyle!’ We never knew what was happening next.
I think the people of Hammersmith will be extremely civilised but we’ll be ready for anything.” She will of course be fine because she is an experienced and acclaimed actress who is riding high – on the back of a camel sometimes, in one famous scene – from her appearance in the hit show Rivals where she played Maud, the naughty and neglected wife of Aidan Turner’s Declan. In fact, straight after the run of Ghosts, she’ll be heading back to romp around Jilly Cooper land as season two filming gets underway.
“I’m so lucky to be part of Rivals,” she says, “It was one of my favourite books growing up and I love Jilly’s ability to handle social satire and how it is now blowing all the minds of the Gen Z-ers. My daughter is 20 and she’s like, ‘Oh, the Eighties looked so fun.’ And I’m like, ‘Yep.
It was.’ There was a lot wrong with it but it was also fun.” She says she’s looking forward to being with the cast again, including, “heavenly Danny Dyer,” in what will be a “substantial shoot,” says, “it’s all very exciting, particularly at this stage of my career.
” But there is the small matter of Ghosts to deal with first. Ibsen’s heavyweight play has been adapted by Gary Owen and is directed by Rachel O’Riordan, the duo behind the likes of Iphigenia in Splott and Killology. “It's a modern adaptation, very much taken into 2025,” Smurfit says, “But it's dealing with the same themes, like abuse and coercion, but handled with a 2025 lens.
We've got a very sparse, cool sort of abstract set, but the language is very realistic, naturalistic, and digestible.” Smurfit plays Helena - Mrs. Alving in the original play - and stars opposite Patricia Allison, Rashan Stone, Deka Walmsley and Callum Scott Howells, who plays her son.
“They’re all intimidatingly brilliant,” says Smurfit. No spoilers here but it is not an easy play, and Smurfit is aware of the greats who have tackled her role, including Liv Ullman, Lesley Manville and Judi Dench. Which doesn’t help with the nerves, but she says the team aspect of such a production helps you through.
“Actors have an ability to build up a rapport and trust very quickly, because you have to,” she says, “And because our director, Rachel, is so inclusive and honest and open, it allows everybody else to be the same. That makes a real difference when it comes to bonding, so you don't have to sit around throwing hacky sacks at each other.” Smurfit was born in Dublin into a family who made a fortune with a packaging company.
It was a grand dynasty but not an acting dynasty, and initially she says, “I would watch theatre and think I couldn’t do that because it would be what I call ‘tits and teeth’ theatre, the jazz hands. I’ve got two left feet and people would pay me money not to sing.” But she became hooked after theatre studies A-Level and says, “No antibiotics can get rid of the acting bug.
” Besides, performing was always a part of her family: “My dad has been this extraordinary businessman his whole life and, as a kid, I used to watch him give rallying speeches to his employees. Any time he did an interview, he was just so entertaining. He's a raconteur, nobody tells a joke better than my dad, he can hold a room.
And my mum was very well read and very elegant, and she could also hold a room. They had that performance thing. And when you grow up in an Irish household, if you can't bring a bit of chat and a bit of crack to the dinner table, then you're not getting fed.
” When asked if she’s gone tee-total and is doing any wellness routines to prepare for the Ghosts run, she scoffs, “No, is the short answer. I wake up at 4 o clock in the morning with lines stuck in my head, but there’s no time for a downward dog.” This seems to be very Smurfit, who is looking forward to a “glass of the Lyric’s Pino Grigio and stinky crisps,” at the end of the run, and also dismisses notions of taking a character like Helena home with her, saying that she thinks of herself as, “A lump of Play-Doh that I just have to mould into the shape of the game I’m playing.
That sounds a bit weird.” She had her big breakthrough in Ballykissangel of course, and set forth on a highly successful screen and stage career, but this is a whole new peak she’s hit post-Rivals. “I'm loving every second of it,” she says, “It's funny, my career has been far from deliberately thought through.
I certainly never have had the power to say, ‘I think I'd like to do blah blah blah next.’ So it’s very exciting, and I love that it's come at this stage in my life. I’m like, ‘Show the dog the bunny,’ you know?” We think so.
She’s taking the opportunities that are now presenting themselves and is in turn adding excitement to whatever she is appearing in, with Ghosts already one of the hottest shows in London. She says of it: “Ghosts will challenge your mind and your emotions. One of the themes is about the stories we tell ourselves that aren’t necessarily true, and the lies you tell to make things palatable.
That’s ever more resonant these days with social media where we have to curate a version of ourselves, instead of just be our real selves.” As for Rivals fans coming to see her, she says she’s hopeful they’ll comes in droves but warns that they shouldn’t expect certain things: “They might be disappointed I’m not on a camel, but it would be fantastic to have them. Any eyeballs are welcome eyeballs.
But camel fans will be disappointed.” Ghosts is at the Lyric Hammersmith to 10 May.
