From Crossroads and Casualty to California

Remember Crossroads? Back when television was grainy black and white and there were only three channels, half the nation watched the daily soap opera. Set in the Midlands village of Kings Oak where business and social life came together at the Crossroads Motel.

pic from http://www.destinationcrossroads.co.uk/

For five years, Carolyn Lyster played the young and beautiful Janice Gifford, who worked at the local car hire company and married the son of the boss and local heartthrob Brian Jarvis. Carolyn left when, true to soap tradition, her baby was abducted and her husband murdered her lover.

Janice may have disappeared from our television screens, but Carolyn certainly hasn’t. She has appeared in many of our favourite programmes, including Casualty, Coronation Street  Heartbeat, The Bill, London's Burning and most recently Doctors.

She has particularly fond memories of one Casualty scene. “I was playing the madam of a brothel that was set alight. After an explosion I had to take a flying leap from the burning building onto a convenient mattress in the road and have all these gorgeous firemen land on top of me.”

However, it wasn’t a fireman that Carolyn married but fellow actor William Gaunt, who will be appearing later this year and in the West End in Arturo Ui.  Their daughter Tilly is currently rehearsing the Dennis Potter play Blue Remembered Hills in Newcastle before touring . Their son Albie is teaching in Japan and has just got engaged to a Japanese girl.

West End regulars will recognise Carolyn from Ray Cooney and other farces, such as Run For Your Wife and No Sex Please, We’re British – productions that have taken her across the globe. “Once we were on board a huge P&O cruise liner in the Antarctic when the sea was very rough.  I have an abiding memory of the late great comedy actor Henry McGee, staggering his way across the set, clinging on to the furniture as he tried to retain some semblance of the plot. It was difficult not to laugh!”

Carolyn has also toured extensively within the UK, a mostly enjoyable experience “except I once fell off the stage during a blackout at the Everyman Cheltenham when I was in Can You Hear Me At The Back? I climbed back on and performed the rest of the scene with a bleeding leg and a fellow actress wondering why I was acting strangely.”

Comedy is Carolyn’s love and forte but she’s also looking forward to the challenge of appearing on stage, alone, in a half-hour one-woman play. Sunset is one of three monologues in Californian Lives by award-winning writer Martin Foreman opening on 21st April at the King’s Head in Islington. “I love the character,” she says. “She’s clear-sighted about herself and her relationships with her husband and children. She makes quite a journey in her reminiscences, going from being a relatively timid unworldly person to a strong fearless one. There’s a lot to bring out and I hope I can do justice to the writing.”

When that run ends?  “My only theatrical ambition at the moment is to get through this unscathed. Plus to keep working forever, appear at the National Theatre and earn huge sums of money doing something I love.”

Reminder - Californian Lives opens on 21st April; book tickets via the link right. 2 tickets are being given away every day; email "I want tkts" to info@arberyproductions.co.uk.