National Theatre

I do remember Enid Blyton. Frowned upon in my primary school for being sexist and old school and because of that my mum insisted that we read Enid Blyton because she wouldn't have anybody censoring our choices, which in some ways was another control. School saying "Don't read it." Mum saying "Do read it!" So I read The Magic Faraway Tree which for me was like the absolute escape. The idea that you could go to this tree and that every day the clouds would move and there would be this new world at the top of the tree. I remember I was really attracted to there being other worlds that you could go to, explore and encounter. Children were brought up in a very different way in Blyton's day; a different generation. We haven't got a clue about what it was like for children then to be children and have their adventures with one another. We're so relational now. We're so involved with our children, we sometimes deny them that encounter with other children.

Do you ever read it to your children?

No, forget it! I was really disappointed. I bought it for them. The cover was a bit too pinky-purpley and the boys wouldn't pick it up. It might be possible that my daughter will. I remember it as a child, but I haven't revisited it. I'd probably go back to it and think it's a load of sexist old rubbish!

Do you have a favourite book or a favourite writer?

I really like John Irving. I haven't read a huge amount of his books but I love his style. He wrote The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany and his books are all about the same size. I love the way writers tell a tale for a certain amount of time and that it's an expression of who they are and how they tell that tale. It's really beautiful how he writes: you have to settle down and go with the story. He's going to give you information and details that are not entirely necessary, but you go with the story. It's very conversational and amusing and tragic. A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favourite books because of the characters and the journey you go on with them. You agree to enter that world. The character Owen Meany is very small, so everything he says is written in capital letters because you know you're hearing something extraordinary.

Do you have a favourite play?

I don't tend to read plays, I tend to go and see them. I do like reading Shakespeare sometimes because I love the poetry; being able to see words you can really appreciate the poetry in a physical way. I might read bits if I've seen them. Just recently I read a David Hare play - The Vertical Hour - that I hadn't seen and I was blown away by the dialogue. Fantastic ideas, but contained in what seemed like very ordinary dialogue: the way people speak. We do use too many words generally in life. We babble. Hare has this fantastic way of paring down words but without making them overly poetic; so it's still about life. I loved reading that. You realise it's a play about everything: life, politics, loss and dreams. And it's just like someone having a conversation.

What were your first impressions on reading Gethsemane?

I was blown away. I felt slightly overawed because I always think David Hare is a political playwright and therefore I simply wouldn't get it because I don't get politics. But reading Gethsemane, I thought it's miraculous the way he makes politics about people, about choices and those moments that you realise you're at a crossroads. I thought "Wow, my goodness, this sounds just like people talking to one another". It's not just rhetoric or ideological. It's people really struggling with life choices. You don't feel like you're being lectured to. And it's funny.

It was interesting that God of Carnage which you did in the West End, seemed to be very much a comedy, but author Yasmina Reza strongly believes it's a tragedy.

I think it's a cultural thing, a national thing. When they did it in France just before we opened, the French didn't laugh at all, really, in the way that the English did. They sat there in a quiet French way and thought "Ooh, I recognise this". It wasn't funny, it was a contemplation. Here, there was a cultural response of laughter - "I recognise that but it's too much to handle". We're very judgmental. "Oh yes I know people like that". "Thank god I'm not like that." We're very good at pointing out other people's foibles. You'd see couples turning to each other and saying "You've done that". That real recognition of seeing themselves or the people they know.

I'm very intrigued by why people don't speak. We're always looking at that in rehearsal: why do people speak, what's your motivation? But also what's your motivation for not speaking? And when you can't express yourself and then you vomit [as her character did in God of Carnage] it's very symbolic. It's like an exorcism for her. Once that's happened she's a different person. I love physical stuff on stage. That's probably why I don't read plays because I think the words are very powerful but it's about how they're lived.

Is there a character you've read that you'd like to play?

I don't think it happens that way. What I love and find so exciting is when things turn up and you couldn't plan them. Things just appear. Someone says I think you should play this. The dream of it. It's like I don't want to know what my birthday presents are. I love what turns up even it doesn't fit or I wouldn't choose it.

Did that happen with Beatrice and Much Ado About Nothing?

Yes. That just turned up and I thought "oh no, I can't do that." But I was persuaded to and was very glad I did.

Is there a classic book that everyone says you should read, but you haven't?

The Brothers Karamazov. I know. I should have read it. I managed to read The Idiot when I was at university, which I thought was great. I'm determined to read it. Because I didn't do English at university, I did Drama, so I was reading a lot of plays and not novels. I'm hoping that I'll become very old and have a lot of time and I'll read them all then. I've only read three Austens and there's all the rest of those. And the Brontës: I've read Wuthering Heights... I've done tapas literature. A little taste from each of them.

Do you have a favourite place that you like to read?

The train. I love a train journey because you can't get off. You have to go on until it's time to get off, and if you're on one of those fast trains, you can nip for a little coffee. Even coming into work - I come in on the tube - it's a treat because you've got that time to read. I'm always really amazed when I bump into people I know on the train because the odds against it are so high. You're slightly caught out, because you're thinking "I'm really pleased to see you, but it's a bit annoying. I've got this great book."  Then you sit there, next to this person you haven't seen for ages, reading.

Tamin Greig appears in Gethsemane in the Cottesloe, 4 November 2008 - 24 February 2009.

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