Volcano | ChicanePictures

Jenny Seagrove Volcano

In first saw popular British actress Jenny Seagrove way back in 1993 when she starred opposite Tom Conti as a “glamorous praying mantis” in Noel Coward’s PRESENT LAUGHTER at the then Globe Theatre (renamed the Gielgud a year later) in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue. Nineteen years later she appeared in the first staging of the English playwright’s ‘lost’ play VOLCANO. After a short tour it settled in for a limited season at the Vaudeville during the summer of 2012.

Over the past thirty something years Jenny’s extensive stage and small screen career has seen her appear in numerous acclaimed productions. One of her most notable roles was QC Jo Mills in the long-running BBC drama JUDGE JOHN DEED.

In VOLCANO she plays the elegant widow Adela, the subject to one man’s philandering urges alongside a smouldering volcano-the ideal metaphor as ‘bubbling emotions are about to erupt.’

Jenny is currently featuring in Alan Ayckbourne’s vintage comedy about adultery HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. I meet her on a pleasant Spring Saturday as she rode her bike to work and chained it outside the stage door. Our brief chat included some reminiscing about her Noel Coward roles as she signed this VOLCANO sketch for me.

Dawn Steele

Scottish actress Dawn Steele returned to the stage in Noel Coward’s ‘lost’ play Volcano which completed a UK tour with a limited six-week run at London’s Vaudeville Theatre in the Autumn of 2012. promoted as a ‘tempestuous drama bubbling with scandal’, it was never performed in Coward’s lifetime and this is believed to be the first major production of the play and it’s West End debut. Written in 1956 when the playwright was suffering the dubious status of being Britain’s first tax exile, it is the product of his laid-back lifestyle, living in a chalet on a hilltop in Jamaica. Crucially it contains a wicked portrait of his equally famous neighbour, James Bond author Ian Feming. “Smouldering libidos among the idle rich,”was one description. Set on the fictional Caribbean Island of Samola,the plot revolves around a love affair between widowed Adela (Jenny Seagrove) and philandering guy (Jason Durr). Enter Dawn, as the acid-tongued wife, Melissa who turns up to retrieve her cheating husband. Best known for playing ‘sexy Lexie’ in the BBC’s Monarch of the Glen,the Independent’s Paul Taylor said one of the highlights was the sparring between Adela and the “witty, glintingly malignant Melissa.” the West End Wingers called Dawn’s performance “pleasingly acidic.”

Dawn signed this sketch and added a kind dedication at the theatre.