In the London premiere of Tim Firth’s This Is My Family earlier this year, Gay Soper played May at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, and in 2023/24, she played Mrs Boyle in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s Theatre, which was directed by Ian Talbot OBE. Gay played Lotte Child in Crazy For You at Chichester Festival Theatre – the mother of Bobby Child, played by Charlie Stemp, and she has performed at Chichester previously, including for their pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk, in which she played Jack with Frankie Howerd and June Whitfield both in the cast. For the Storyhouse Chester’s 2018 summer season, Gay played Mrs Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and she previously played Grandma in the London premiere of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole the Musical (working with Barry James, who she starred in Les Misérables with from 1988 to 1991). Prior to playing Grandma in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole the Musical, Gay played Mrs Strakosh in Funny Girl at both the Menier Chocolate Factory and the Savoy Theatre alongside Sheridan Smith as Fanny Brice, and performed as Mrs Alexander for two years in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the West End’s Apollo and Gielgud Theatres. Amongst Gay’s extensive stage career, her productions include the 2005 London revival of Sunday in the Park with George as Old Lady/Blair Daniels with Daniel Evans as George, being in the original London cast of the 1971 Stephen Schwartz musical Godspell, which starred David Essex and was produced by Binkie Beaumont, and she made her professional debut at 19 years old as Eliza Doolittle (after understudying the role) in My Fair Lady, and went on to play Mrs Higgins in the musical for their Denmark tour and Mrs Pearce at Kilworth House Open Air Theatre. This year, Gay is celebrating 60 years in the entertainment industry, with her further shows including The Mitford Girls at Chichester Festival Theatre and the transfer to the Globe Theatre (now Gielgud Theatre) as Deborah, with Patricia Hodge as her sister Nancy, and Killing Rasputin at Bridewell Theatre as Tsarina Alexandra. On screen, most recently, Gay played Patricia (Passenger) in an episode of Moonflower Murders alongside Lesley Manville, Susan Crichton-Jones in ITV’s Romany Jones, Veronica Sweet in Rude Health for Channel 4, and in the 1970s children’s show The Flumps, she narrated/voiced every character. We found out from Gay about playing May in the London premiere of This Is My Family, her time as Mrs Boyle in The Mousetrap, being in the cast of Crazy For You at Chichester Festival Theatre, performing in the 2005 production Sunday in the Park with George and being in the original London cast of Godspell in 1971.

Earlier this year, you were in the cast of the London premiere of Tim Firth’s This Is My Family at Southwark Playhouse Elephant as May, how was your time in the musical?

Earlier this year, I was playing the role of May in This Is My Family by Tim Firth. It was its first outing in London, but previous productions of this tender show were done in Chichester and Sheffield, with Sheila Hancock and Siân Phillips respectively playing the role of May. So I am the third lady to have a go at it!

It’s a charming show about family life, hopes and dreams, seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. May, her grandmother, has been a capable nurse with a busy career, as a one-parent family after her husband died far too young. She brought up her only son with love and care. She is now old and dementia is descending, and the family decide she must move in with them.

The music is catchy and it’s written more like an opera as the tunes get repeated by different characters throughout, with differing keys and tempos.

What was May like to play and how was it performing alongside your on-stage family?

May was a delight to play and an interesting journey into what it must be like to realise your mind is beginning to wander into unwanted pathways.

My on-stage family were much fun to work with, and I think we formed a credible family.

How familiar were you with the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap before booking your role of Mrs Boyle and what did you enjoy about working on the West End production at St. Martin’s Theatre in 2023/24?

I had seen The Mousetrap when a friend of mine played Christopher Wren, back in the late ‘60s. I thought it was dated and boring then, but Ian Talbot, who directed it more recently, transformed it into something far more entertaining. He found Agatha Christie’s sense of humour in many scenes, and helped each actor find meticulous details in their roles.

He is such a brilliant director, and after my initial fears of going back on stage (after the COVID lockdowns, which had forced us all to stay at home) were all healed, it was wonderful to be back, part of a company again. And a lovely bunch they were!

I adored playing Mrs Boyle… it’s always more fun to play a difficult or unpleasant character than a bland, sweet one!

In the Chichester Festival Theatre’s run of Crazy For You, you could be seen as Lotte Child, how was this?

Crazy For You…. such a happy show, with all that glorious tap dancing, and Charlie Stemp still at the top of his game as the lead role. I was his overbearing mother and had some nice scenes.

Chichester has always held such happy memories for me. I was Debo in the brilliant production of The Mitford Girls there in 1981, which transferred to the West End, and also, I was Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk in Chichester the following Christmas, with Frankie Howerd and June Whitfield. I toured there in Salad Days, directed by Ned Sherrin, a few years later too.

How did you find the experience performing in Storyhouse Chester’s summer season when you played Mrs Armfeldt in A Little Night Music and Rebecca Nurse in The Crucible?

Chester’s Storyhouse Theatre is a marvellous state-of-the-art building with a hugely adaptable main stage, plus a small studio theatre at the top of the building, and a library, a cinema, and more.

The production of A Little Night Music was one of the highlights of my career, as I am a huge Sondheim fan, and to get to sing Liaisons each night was just fantastic.

The Crucible couldn’t have been more different, and it was a fascinating experience to do an Arthur Miller play, especially as it played in repertoire with the Sondheim.

Chester is a lovely city, and I enjoyed being able to wander around and see all its little quirks. Walking around the walls of this ancient city was heaven!

What was it like playing Grandma in the London premiere of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole the Musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory and how different did you find this project to your previous work?

Doing The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was great fun. The Menier Chocolate Factory is pretty much my favourite theatre to play – I have done Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George there, plus Funny Girl and Pippin.

The boys in the cast were so talented, and as there were four of them sharing the role, every show was quite a novelty as each one made the role their own.

And I had the joy of sharing the stage with Barry James, who I did Les Misérables with (as the Thenardiers from ‘88 to ‘91).

Can you tell us about your time as Mrs Strakosh in Funny Girl at the Menier Chocolate Factory and the Savoy Theatre in the West End?

Mrs Strakosh was a nice role to play in Funny Girl, though I admit I’d rather have played the mother!

The music and the story are so memorable, and of course we all remember seeing Barbra Streisand playing Fanny Brice in the movie and on stage in London. But Sheridan Smith did a very good job as Fanny, and the audiences adored her.

It was great to transfer to the Savoy… it was one of those West End theatres I had never played before.

You played Mrs Alexander in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the West End’s Apollo and Gielgud Theatres, how was it taking on the role of Mrs Alexander and telling the show’s story?

Mrs Alexander in The Curious Incident! I just loved this play and stayed in it for two years.

Marianne Elliott is a glorious director, and her then-assistant Katy Rudd oversaw our cast… Katy is now a hugely respected director in her own right… she’s put on several hit pieces, including the National Theatre’s production of Ballet Shoes.

It was so fascinating to learn a bit about Asperger’s Syndrome and the Autistic spectrum. I have found this understanding greatly helpful over the years.

What was it like working on the 2005 London revival of Sunday in the Park with George at the Menier Chocolate Factory, which starred Daniel Evans?

Sunday in the Park with George was one of the major highlights of my career. I had already been in Side by Side by Sondheim at Wyndhams, where I took over from Julia McKenzie, and I had seen every Sondheim show that had ever come to London… and had seen this particular show at the National Theatre.

I hadn’t been sure I liked it when I saw it there, but once we got to work on this production at the Menier Chocolate Factory, I was in seventh heaven! It’s an amazing piece, and working on it every day and hearing all the subtleties, the nuances, was a revelation. I felt as if I was taking a degree in Sondheim.

I simply adored doing this show and the cast were all superb. My duet with Daniel Evans, Beautiful, was so good to do, and we then made the CD recording of the entire production. I believe it to be one of the very best ever recorded.

We transferred to Wyndhams and our audiences were rapturous. Our last night was packed to the rafters and the entire audience stood at the end and applauded for a very, very long time. We had to bow, exit, and come back again and again, as they cheered and cheered and wouldn’t let us go. It really was thrilling.

What do you remember most from being in the original London cast of Godspell at the Roundhouse in 1971?

Godspell was probably the best of all my experiences on stage. I was in it for over two years and we had full houses every single show, every week. It made David Essex a star.

We opened at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. Our producer was Binkie Beaumont of H. M. Tennent… they were the Cameron Mackintosh of their day. They were nervous about bringing the show to London and so chose the Roundhouse to see how it would fare. Binkie needn’t have worried. We were a smash hit, right from the first-ever preview.

All the cast became the toast of London, and we were invited to so many important events in town at the time. It was an extraordinary experience. Showing Jesus as a clown, and all the disciples as clowns, was a unique concept and was not approved of by some very puritanical groups, including a number of Dutch Calvinistic nuns who made protests outside the theatre.

They imagined we were being blasphemous… and when we challenged them by asking “Have you actually SEEN the show?”, they replied that they had not, nor ever would. The fact is, it was far from blasphemous. We had all Christian denominations, and many other people of faith, come to see it and love it, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, not to mention Prince Charles and many, many members of the Royal Family.

The man who wrote most of the music in the show was a very young Stephen Schwartz, who has gone on to become one of the most famous writers of musicals in the 20th and 21st centuries, including Pippin and Wicked. Godspell introduced me to many churchmen and I began attending Anglican services… which to this day I still do.

Having made your professional debut at the age of 19 as Eliza Doolittle in the UK Tour of My Fair Lady, you went on to play Mrs Higgins on tour in Denmark and Mrs Pearce at Kilworth House Open Air Theatre; do you have any favourite memories from being involved with My Fair Lady that you can share?

My Fair Lady has been a thread throughout my career. My first job on leaving LAMDA was to understudy and then play the role of Eliza. I was only 19 years old when I first played it. This is such a wonderful role and it fitted me perfectly.

Cyril Ornadel, who was the musical supervisor, told me the most flattering of comments… he said I was the first person who could really convince as both a Flower Girl and as a Lady! I’ve always been good at accents, so both Cockney and upper-class English were comfortable for me.

I was incredibly lucky to do this production, as it was the one which had been in Drury Lane before it went out on tour. When I played Eliza, I was given several of Julie Andrews’ old costumes to wear (she had left the production years before), including the ball gown and long velvet cloak.

My Higgins was a darling actor called Myles Eason, and Pickering was played by Tom Chatto. Zena Dare was Mrs Higgins, James Hayter was Doolittle. Doris Hare was Mrs Pearce and her sister Betty was also in the cast.

Many years later, I played Mrs Higgins on a tour of Denmark. I adored playing that role too… and clearly remembered how Zena Dare had played it in my first job.

Zena Dare was a very old lady, and had played Mrs Higgins from the very first performance at Drury Lane with Julie Andrews. She was gloriously dignified and charming, and an absolute star. So when I got to play that role, I emulated her performance.

Then, several years after that, I played Mrs Pearce, the housekeeper, during a summer season at Kilworth House Open Air Theatre in Leicestershire.

On screen, you most recently appeared in an episode of Moonflower Murders as Patricia (Passenger), what was this like to film?

I am a huge fan of Lesley Manville, and how lucky was I that I got a (small!) role opposite her in a scene of Moonflower Murders. Lesley was a delight to work with – she was chatty and friendly, and I was thrilled to be acting with her. We filmed this on a plane sitting on the tarmac of Heraklion Airport in Crete. Last year I saw her in Oedipus… and her performance was absolutely stunning as Jocasta.

Can you tell us about your experience playing Susan Crichton-Jones in Romany Jones for ITV and Veronica Sweet in Rude Health for Channel 4?

Romany Jones was an ITV sitcom series. I played Susan Crichton-Jones opposite Jonathan Cecil. Queenie Watts and Arthur Mullard played the other couple in the series, and I adored them both.

I also played opposite John Wells in an early Channel 4 series called Rude Health. It was a charming piece, and we did two series which were modestly successful but seem to have disappeared without trace!

How was it voicing every character in the children’s TV series The Flumps?

I was a busy voiceover artiste during the ‘70s and ‘80s and was cast as all the voices and narrator for The Flumps in, I think, 1976. This was a hugely successful TV series shown on BBC on repeat for about ten years.

This year, you are celebrating 60 years in the entertainment industry, how does it feel to have reached this milestone and can you say about some of your further stand-out highlights from your extensive career so far?

The Mitford Girls was one of the best shows I ever did. We opened in Chichester and transferred to the Globe (now Gielgud) Theatre. Patricia Hodge played Nancy Mitford and I was her younger sister Debo, who became the Duchess of Devonshire.

Another wonderful show was Killing Rasputin… an extraordinary piece about Yusupov, who murdered Rasputin. I played Tsarina Alexandra. We played this show at the Bridewell Theatre in the heart of the City of London.

Having achieved 60 years in showbiz, I feel so proud to still be a working actress and singer. I never made it right to the top, but to be honest I am far happier being a second or third in line, as it were. The stress experienced by those with big names is something I really wouldn’t want. I am still enjoying it.

In some respects, I guess the business has changed… Certainly when I began, every actor and actress dressed well every day and spoke beautiful English. Nowadays we all turn up at rehearsals looking like tramps! We wear sloppy, comfortable clothes and many actors retain their original accents.

The voice production we all used to learn – whereby you could be heard distinctly even at the back or top of a large auditorium – has gone. We had no microphones, they weren’t needed. It’s so heartbreaking now. Our generation learned to develop our voices, increasing our range and quality of tone, and we could be heard even when whispering. We learned to sing well and had no need of microphones for that either. Not any longer! People rely on microphones and so their voices have never had a chance to grow.

Where does your love of acting come from and how did you originally get into it?

My love of acting comes from my grandma Maud Rathone, who was a brilliant actress and comedienne. She was an amateur, as in those days a ‘respectable’ married woman didn’t go into the profession. Actors were thought of as having very loose morals.

My mother too was a busy amateur actress and my father was a wonderful pianist. So I grew up seeing all the local amateur productions and listening to my father’s beautiful playing on the piano at home.

I was desperately shy, so Mum sent me to elocution lessons to help me gain confidence. It worked! I was winning medals in verse speaking from the age of eight. I received so much support and encouragement from my family. How lucky I was!

I auditioned for RADA, LAMDA, and Central. I got into LAMDA and had two very happy years there, even though some of my fellow classmates looked down upon musicals… and I had already decided I wanted to be in them.

Do you have any favourite films, TV and theatre shows to watch?

I love going to theatre shows… I recently saw Fallen Angels by Noël Coward, which is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory… and I am about to go to the Orange Tree in Richmond to see my darling friend Patricia Hodge in The Rivals. I don’t go to the West End terribly often, but I did love the play about Richard Burton’s Hamlet which transferred from the National a couple of years ago.

I don’t watch much television, though I did adore the re-run of The Chatterley Affair, with a young Rafe Spall playing a juror at the trial. Fantastic!!

How do you like to spend your free time?

Free time is spent running my home, which I bought aged 27. It’s seen me through all of life’s vicissitudes. It’s a haven of peace.

I also love cooking, giving lunch and dinner parties, and going to see my friends. I do Keep Fit classes on Clapham Common every week.

I love going to the British Museum, the V&A, the National Gallery, Tate Britain, and so on. So many wonderful exhibitions to see!

What advice would you give someone starting out as an actor?

To someone starting out… I’d say: get as well educated as you possibly can, read all the good literature you can, listen to all the music you can, and expand your horizons. Listen to classical music from Mozart and Bach to Philip Glass, and popular music from Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Noël Coward, to Sondheim and Bernstein. Listen to opera. Learn to speak at least one other language. Travel widely, as far as your purse will allow.

Listen, listen, listen, and watch, watch, watch, on and off stage. Remember to be humble. Arrogance is your biggest enemy. Learn to speak RP properly, otherwise you are limited in the roles you can play. Period pieces really do need RP. Learn to dance, even if not brilliantly. Learn to sing well. Remember, if you are doing eight shows a week, you need a really strong technique. Acting well is even more important than all the other skills.

Above all, keep your sense of humour. You will have many difficult times and many upsetting times. If you can laugh at yourself, as well as learning to love and humour your fellow actors, you will survive. You also need to have a second string to your bow… another kind of job which you can pick up and put down easily, and which you can enjoy doing. Hardly any actors can make their whole living by acting. Develop as many skills as you can.

Do you have any projects coming up that you can tell us about and what are you hoping 2026 brings for you?

My only project coming up is a one-hour piece about Oscar Wilde, which I am doing with an actor friend, John Fleming. We will do scenes from some of the plays and stories and talk about Wilde’s life.

I have no other plans for next year, but I do rather fancy doing a movie or two.