Remembering Jo Tope

·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

The host remembers actor Jo Tope, who gave a career-defining performance in Caryl Churchill's 'Escaped Alone'.

The episode opens with the host wishing listeners a Merry Christmas and promoting his solo comedy show 'Aha! The Janice and Frank Story' at Oranmore. He then shifts tone to announce a memorial episode for Joanna Tope, a respected actor who recently passed away. The host reminisces about interviewing Jo in a dressing room at the Tron Theatre after her performance in Caryl Churchill's 'Escaped Alone', a play with four female leads over 50. He describes Jo as vibrant and gracious, treating him like an old friend despite not knowing him well. The replayed interview begins with Jo recalling how she got the part in 'Escaped Alone' after a cat meowed outside her window, which she took as a sign. She details the challenges of learning her monologue, which had almost no punctuation. Jo then recounts her early career, starting with Steven Joseph's summer company in Scarborough, where she played the original Ginny in Alan Ayckbourn's 'Relatively Speaking'. She shares anecdotes about working as a nanny for David Heyman's family, meeting Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and her first job in Scotland at Pitlochry Theatre. Jo discusses performing in fortnightly rep, improvising shows with a trusted company, and having to learn Juliet in one day after an actress's car accident. She talks about moving to Scotland after meeting her husband at a Christmas party and her comeback role as Jocasta in 'Oedipus' at the Citizens Theatre. Jo reflects on feeling excluded from the Scottish acting clique and the invisibility of women actors after a certain age. She describes performing Douglas Maxwell's one-woman play 'The Promise', which deals with FGM, and taking it to New York, where she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and met Bryn Terfel. The interview covers her love for live theatre, the decline of repertory companies, and what she hasn't done in her career. The host concludes by encouraging listeners to remember loved ones and promoting his show again.

As heard by us

A Christmas-season theatre remembrance full of borrowed clothes, backstage rules, and stories that keep colleagues' legacies alive.

Christmas lands here in that odd stretch between Boxing Day and New Year, and the episode uses the season to open up a warm, lightly unruly act of theatre remembrance.

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Why you'd press play

You get a Christmas theatre reminiscence where borrowed clothes lead to a Pitlochry job and old theatre rules sound strange.

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