ON PAPER Beverley Callard’s latest role – matriarchal and out of control – should be a cinch after 20-odd years on Coronation Street as Liz McDonald.

But she says her character Mari Hoff in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which comes to the Churchill Theatre in Bromley from Monday (May 6) until Saturday (May 11), is quite different and has moved audiences to tears.

Beverley, 56, said: “Liz was a much stronger female totally.

“Mari is more vulnerable and much less able to cope. Liz was much stronger and much feistier.

“Maybe at first, Mari appears to be quite feisty but she is actually not. She is a grieving widow and she doesn’t know how to cope with it at all.”

She added: “It is the most amazing role.

“It is fantastic as an actor. It is one of the best parts I have ever played. You feel the audience going with you, they experience everything with you, which is just fantastic.”

Beverley’s character Mari Hoff is mother to shy Little Voice, who spends her time in her room immersed in her dead father’s record collection and perfecting her impressions which reveals a beautiful voice.

The show also stars X Factor runner-up Ray Quinn and impressionist Jess Robinson as Little Voice.

Because Mari is “meant to be lumping and bumping out of her clothes” Beverley put on two stone to play her.

“It was really easy!” she said. “I doubt it will be that easy to get it off. I doubt it very much.”

But you suspect it won’t be as hard for Beverley as it might be for others. She has been a fitness instructor for 30 years, as a long line of DVDs will testify.

She said: “I have always been an actress but I have always taught fitness as well. I don’t think I could do one without the other.

“When I teach fitness it is the only time I am just a person – I’m not an actress, I’m not a wife,

I’m not a mother. I teach men as well but I love teaching women, just real people.”

Though she has made fitness DVDs, appeared as a panellist on Loose Women and in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Beverley will always be best known for her role on Coronation Street and says she will “never say never” to going back.

She said: “I loved playing Liz. The writers were amazing, the stories they put Liz through. Of course I miss part of it but I was in the Street 22 years and you need to play something else every now and then. It is good for you as an actor.

“I am still recognised as Liz. That will never go and I don’t mind. Also if it gets people into the theatre that’s great as well, and then of course they see you being very different.”

 

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, written and directed by Jim Cartwright, is at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley, from Monday (May 6) to Saturday (May 11). Tickets cost £10 to £32.50 and are available on 0844 8717 620 and atgtickets.com/Bromley (both incurring a booking fee) or fee-free at the Box Office.