Written by David Ward arts correspondent

POLLY Lister was taken to a performance of The Fire Dragon at the Palace Theatre in Redditch for her seventh birthday. And that was it; she was immediately stage struck.

“I fell in love with it, the smell of it,” she said during a break between rehearsals for the summer season at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. “I was desperate to see it again.”

She was soon appearing on stage herself: she was the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver! at her secondary school and by 15 had joined the National Youth Theatre, later appearing in a farce about newts and nuns.

A drama degree course at Manchester Metropolitan University led immediately to her first job with two parts, one of them a goose, in a play for Manchester’s Library Theatre company. After a fringe show in London and some theatre in education work, she roamed very happily through Europe and the Middle East for seven years with Tour de Force theatre company.

Now she roams Britain, pleased to go wherever the work is. Her parts in the 2015 Keswick summer include a nun in Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer, a sozzled married woman in Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels and Beverley in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, a dark comedy which was a huge hit when first staged in London and an even bigger hit when seen on television.

A problem for any actor taking on Beverley is that many people still remember Alison Steadman’s performance in the role. “In the weeks leading up to rehearsals, I was terrified that I would either try some awful replica of Alison Steadman or do everything she didn’t do,” said Polly.

“But as soon as we did the read-through, I wasn’t as scared. I just read the lines, made them make sense and told the story. The responsibility I have is to play a woman who is unfulfilled in a marriage in which she is not respected and is not allowed an opinion or to express herself except in a materialistic way. She is utterly caged, she doesn’t have a voice or a purpose.”

As Polly appears in two plays featuring women whose marriages are hardly blissfully happy, she will be working on a one-woman show about the breakdown of her own. “I was cast as a wife in real life, believing it to be the forever part. And then I was suddenly sacked.”

The original idea was to write a self-help damage limitation pamphlet for any woman in a similar situation: “I had loads of support from friends and family but I still nearly went under and couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

While working at the Dukes in Lancaster, she mentioned the pamphlet to Joe Sumsion, the theatre’s artistic director, who suggested a play instead. “I started writing down some thoughts and those thoughts turned into a torrent of feelings and emotions. And then I began the play, which is set in the dressing rooms of the various theatres I found myself in during the divorce.”

Part of the play has already been tried out on stage at the Dukes and the final version should be seen there next year and then tour. It’s a tight deadline and Polly will have to be disciplined to avoid being distracted by the joys of working in Keswick.

She is a member of a company of 12 actors who gathered in the town in April to live and work together for seven months: “You are put together with a group of people you might not choose to be with and the success of the season depends on the success of the ensemble.

“It’s also our responsibility to make the best experience for ourselves that we can. So we can kayak or swim in the lake, go for a run, get lost up mountains. And Keswick being quite magical has quite a lot to do with it. This theatre is a great place to be.”

Polly came first to Theatre by the Lake in 2004 to play one of the ugly sisters in Cinderella and has been coming back ever since, appearing in spring and Christmas productions as well as four summer seasons; her tally of Keswick shows is now well into double figures and she has particularly fond memories of playing Maggie in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa at Easter last year.

The play told the story of five sisters living together in Donegal. (Audiences couldn’t pronounce its title; it was variously called Dancing at Lufthansa, Dancing at Lasagne or simply “That Irish play.”) “It was a rich time, an odd time – the perfect part, the perfect ensemble. And it spoke to me. Maggie really lived for those weeks.”

Polly relishes the fact that Theatre by the Lake replaced a touring theatre, the famous Blue Box, which trundled round the country for 25 years. “I love working here so much because you can almost feel that it had its origins in something that would be packed up and then travel on.

“If ever there was a theatre for the kind of work I like doing, it would have been the Blue Box. I just want someone to make another Blue Box now. It would be like a circus – and that’s another thing I fell in love with. I like the whole idea of stowing everything in a van and moving on. I think it’s why I like tents and caravans and camper vans.”

Abigail’s Party opens on Saturday (June 6, 8pm) and runs until November 6.

Box office 017687-74411.