Down to earth

Lloyd Evans talks to the warm, vibrant, vegetable-growing actor, teacher and director Caroline Quentin

Terminal fear. Rising nausea. And possibly vomiting. That’s what Caroline Quentin expects to go through on the opening night of her new play, Terrible Advice, at the Menier Chocolate Factory. ‘I’m really pretending it’s not happening at the moment,’ she tells me when we meet in the theatre bar. With two weeks to go before the first performance, she confesses, ‘I get dry-mouth at the very bloody thought of it. Mind you, I’m always like this halfway through rehearsals, I think, agh! I can’t bear it, perhaps I can run away. Or feign injury. Or I start booking flights mentally and all that.’

Does she dream that the theatre has burnt down? ‘Oh, yeah, I do all that.’ And imagine burning it down herself? ‘Imagine it? No, I actually plan it.’

In person, she’s warm, vibrant, fast-talking and apt to burst into fits of laughter.