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Imelda Staunton plays Enid in That Day We Sang. Imelda is an iconic film and musical theatre actress best known for her performances in Up the Garden Path, the Harry Potter franchise in which she played Professor Dolores Umbridge and the title role in Vera Drake for which she won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has appeared alongside That Day We Sang co-star Michael Ball in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and most recently, as Rose in Gypsy. Here, she discusses her character, the musical love story and what is was like to work with Michael Ball and Victoria Wood.

Can you describe your character, Enid?

Enid is a lowly PA in an office with incredibly low self worth and feels that life has really passed her by. It starts with her attending a big reunion for the Manchester Children’s School Choir that she sang in as a little girl in the 20s where she meets Mr Baker, Tubby. Enid doesn’t actually remember him but thinks straight away, he is terribly nice as he is talking about the music and the song they recorded as children with such passion and emotion. She rather takes a shine to him, but knows that she can’t or won’t do much about it.

Why does she feel she can’t do anything about it?

She liked Tubby from the moment she saw him but there are complications in her life. What comes out in Victoria’s lyrics, is that there are people in life who are brave and those who aren’t. Especially those who aren’t brave enough to make the changes necessary to make themselves happy. It’s a great story about someone being liberated from their own inadequate behaviour towards themselves, to treat themselves better. You have a responsibility to be happy and Tubby and Enid aren’t people who know how to do that, but in this story it allows that to happen.

Do you feel this is a love story, not just about Tubby and Enid, but for the other characters as well?

It isn’t just a love story, it’s about all different types of relationships. The true love of a parent for a child, a teacher who’s trying to help children better themselves, old friends. This celebrates the goodness in people without it being sugary. Also this is a love story that isn’t about people in their twenties or thirties, or even forties, it’s a love story about people in their middle age. They are given a second chance, rekindled through music and music is so evocative for all of us. We all say ‘I started crying at that music’ or ‘that piece gave me goosebumps’. I don’t know what it does to us physiologically, how it churns up something in us, but this music lights something inside of them both. They rediscover joy.

What is it about Victoria’s skill as a writer that gives it such heart?

I think she always recognises, although dressed up in comedy, people’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Their bête noires and inadequacies, this for me is the best kind of comedy. If we can recognise ourselves in someone else, a character, we laugh. You’d never admit it but she just writes the hilarity of our own lives for us all to see. Victoria writes so well for northern people, she doesn’t write for Parisians or Russians, she writes for these people where she comes from. This is what she knows, she recognises it, her ear for the tune and of the way they speak is phenomenal.

What was the rehearsal process between yourself, Michael and Victoria?

Well unusually in television we have had rehearsals! Because this is a musical we actually spent about three weeks doing singing and dancing rehearsals and we also recorded most of the music before Christmas last year. So we had a good lot of time to get things right.

Does it make a difference having the writer also direct?

It’s very, very good I have to say. She’s given great notes and she knows what she wants. It doesn’t always work when writers direct but because her ear is so acute, and she has been so involved in all the shows that she’s done, she knows what works, how it works and what’s needed to make a gag work.

What is it about That Day We Sang you feel audiences will love?

It has a lovely Christmassy feel to it, added to that it’s a musical with great and original songs. It’s as glorious as Mamma Mia, but this is Victoria’s music so it has that unique and original edge. I’ve always loved new writing, be it theatre or TV or film, and she’s covered every base on this. She’s got the comedy but there’s the pathos and the music, it’s just really, really great.