Things are not going according to plan. I have arranged to meet Penelope Skinner, whose play Lyonesse will open in the West End on 17 October, in a “quiet” cafe in Tufnell Park. Only the cafe is packed and it’s coming up to closing time. For great chunks of our conversation, which covers some sensitive topics, including Skinner’s own #MeToo experience, a waitress wields a loud vacuum cleaner nearby, threatening to drown us out. However Skinner, who is such a natural comic when she writes, is quick to laugh it off. It may not be the glamorous interview she was hoping for but life never quite winds up how you expect, does it?
Skinner started as an actor. Kind of. After completing a postgrad at the Oxford School of Drama she moved to London and hit the audition trail. She was almost immediately “100% unemployed, bar one understudy job and a tour of village halls with a new play”. Perhaps she was just a “bit shit” at acting, the straight-talking and self-deprecating playwright says. There was also something about the uncertainty of the profession – the constant rollercoaster of rejection – that fundamentally didn’t suit her.
