Oxford Weekend, Friday May 2nd, 2003

A Model Of Professions
Peter Hall casts Twiggy in the starring role in Mrs Warren's Profession, writes Helen Peacocke.

The year was 1966 and the girl who was about to change her name and her hairstyle was just 16. What no one could have forseen that chilly January day when Lesley Hornby became Twiggy and emerged from Leonard's scissors to reveal a fresh look was that the face of fashion photography and our concept of beauty was about to change.
All that happened more than 35 years ago, yet most who were around at the time will recall the dramatic way the world's first supermodel emerged from obscurity to fame virtually overnight and came to epitomise those exciting years of the late sixties.
Twiggy's slender look was suddenly beautiful, so was short cropped hair and that enigmatic smile could be seen on fashion magazine covers throughout the world.
Twiggy, however went on to prove she was not just a pretty face by becoming a successful actress in film, stage and television making an impact in Ken Russell's 1971 film The Boy Friend for which she won two Golden Globe awards.
Invitations to go on the stage followed with the lead role in Cinderella at the Casino Theatre, London, in 1974, followed by a charity show, The Butterfly Ball, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1975. Since then her stage appearances have included Blithe Spirit, Noel & Gertie, If Love Were All and The Play What I Wrote. 
None of those shows took her to Oxford, however, even though she spent many years living in nearby Chesterton. She and her husband might still be there, had it not been for the extension to the M40 in the early 1990s which created so much traffic noise that they decided that if they were to be plagued by traffic night and day they might as well live in London.
Now she is preparing to face an opening night at the Oxford Playhouse as Mrs Warren, in Sir Peter Hall's production of Bernard Shaw's provocative comedy Mrs Warren's Profession which was considered so shocking when it was penned in 1893 that it was banned from more than 30 years, apart from two nigths at the theatre of the New Lyric Club, London, in 1902, with Fanny Brough as Mrs Warren. When it was given a brief airing in the US three years later the entire cast were arrested on opening night.
This is the second time Twiggy has been offered a lead part by Sir Peter. She refused the first as the opening night clashed with the day she planned to marry her husband, Leigh Lawson, which was a secret rendezvous, as Twiggy explained.
"It was in 1988, and we were trying to set up a secret way of getting married without the Press getting wind of it. Actually it was so secret even I did not know where we were to marry.
"Peter had come round with a script, saying that he was not going to go away until I said yes so, in the end, we just had to tell him."
Twiggy says she felt bad about this, but trying to fix the wedding date without it being public knowledge had become a nightmare. Apart from some very close friends, Sir Peter became the only other person who knew about it in advance. So, when Sir Peter rang last year to offer her the part of Mrs Warren, she had to say yes.
"I had no excuse. I consider Peter Hall one of the great talents of British theatre and a quite remarkable man.
"And what a play! To think that it had been written by a man. Quite extraordinary, real women's lib stuff. Quite unheard of for a man to think that way in those days."
Twiggy admits to being very moved when she first read the play which centres on Mrs Warren's struggle for respectability and her daughter's reactions when she discovers her Cambridge education has been funded by prostitution.
Working with Sir Peter Hall has proved rewarding too. "Everything you do with peter Hall is part of a learning experience. Working with him is like attending a series of master classes.
"There have been times when I can hardly believe it, that I am working with this brilliant man", she added. Learning the script has been a slog but she got that all done before Christmas, locking herself away in a room going through one page and then another, often speaking the words out loud as she went shopping.
"I have often wondered if I am going to get picked up by the police for talking to myself while learning a script, particularly when I am going through one of the big speeches."
Having learnt the script, the work of taking on the mantel of her subject began.
"I have to find my character, get to know exactly who she is, why she says what she does and why she acts as she does. That comes during rehearsals as the play begins to take shape. It's a very exciting process."
Twiggy is thrilled that Hannah Yelland, the 25 year old who starred in the West End revival of Daisy Pulls It Off, has been cast as the daughter.
"I decided to have her over for tea before rehearsals got under way so we could get to know each other. When I opened the door and saw her standing there I cried out with astonishment - there was me as I was 30 years ago. It was quite remarkable casting on Peter Hall's part.
When Mrs Warren's Profession opens at he Playhouse Theatre on Tuesday, it will be the first night of a tour that takes in Cambridge, Bath, Richmond and several other major provincial theatres.