IT WOULD be a bizarre scenario for a James Bond script – Pussy Galore peering through the cracked window of a dilapidated Dingle cinema.
But it’s a moment that happened in real life when Wirral-born actor Nickolas Grace took her on a tour of Liverpool’s old picturehouses, back in the 70s.
“My great-grandfather built some of the first cinemas in Liverpool,” says the 62-year-old actor, best known for playing Anthony Blanche in the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited.
“When I went back to do a play up there with Honor Blackman in 75, I said ‘Come on, let’s go and see my great-grandfather’s cinemas’.
“The Lyceum Garston was still there but the others had all become bingo halls or furniture stores.
“There’s a fantastic one in the Dingle that he had designed like an Elizabethan playhouse and we looked through some of the cracked windows. You could see some of the old tapestries all covered in graffiti and slashed. It was just really sad.”
Grace, whose TV roles include the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1980s cult series Robin of Sherwood, will be returning to Liverpool again next week to play Pickering in My Fair Lady at the Philharmonic Hall.
Accompanied by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, he will narrate the story of the Cockney girl integrated into high society in a show that includes all the songs and some of the scenes from the musical.
Irish singer Annalene Beechey plays Eliza Doolittle, while the part of Professor Higgins is taken by fellow Brideshead cast member Anthony Andrews.
“It’s really great,” says Grace.
“We did the show twice in October at the Sage Gateshead and that was the first time we’d worked together since we finished filming Brideshead.
“Nearly all of us have kept in touch since. For an actor, that’s a sign that something’s a good piece of work.”
He is very proud to have been involved in a series that continues to set a benchmark for British drama three decades after it was made.
“You wouldn’t be able to make it now,” he adds, “because they wouldn’t give you that amount of time – it took nearly two years to complete the whole thing.”
