Dance to music of boxing

One of the mainstays of Taggart turns to innovative theatre.

Blythe Duff

THERE came a point in Blythe Duff's life when there'd been a murder too many.

The actress, best known for playing detective inspector Jackie Reid on Scottish television program Taggart, also happens to be married to a former homicide detective.

"My husband Tom's been retired nine years now, but when he had a murder on and I had to work, it was very, very hard," Duff says from her home in Glasgow. "On top of that, he was helping me rehearse for Taggart. I tell you, that man has played every dead body I've ever worked with."

She stifles a laugh. "You know there really did come a point where we just couldn't both have murders at the same time. It was too much hard work."

Hard work is something the 49-year-old actress knows all about. After 21 years on the long-running Scottish detective series, axed in May by British network ITV, the longest serving member of the Taggart team is preparing to make her first visit to Australia as part of an innovative British theatre work.

Beautiful Burnout, a dance/theatre piece about boxing from the National Theatre of Scotland and movement-based company Frantic Assembly, makes its antipodean debut at the Sydney Festival this week before travelling to Perth and New Zealand festivals.

Written by British playwright Bryony Lavery, Beautiful Burnout follows a group of late-teenage boys who find purpose, amid the clutter of working-class life, in boxing. And Duff, born in East Kilbride, near Glasgow, is in her element. She plays Carlotta Burns, the battling single mother of one of the boys.

Directors and choreographers Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett bring Lavery's work to life in a production that blurs the line between movement and method. Duff says her role is "pretty straightforward" compared with the physicality the rest of the cast displays.

"It's embarrassing," she says, laughing. "All I have to worry about is changing my shoes, or lifting a laundry basket in the next scene. But the rest of the cast really bust a gut. I mean there is sweat pouring off them . . ."

Training for Beautiful Burnout, which Duff joined on its New York production last year, involved daily hour-long boxing sessions, with "real press-ups and stretches and all of that. It was all pretty intense."

But the piece, which takes place in a huge boxing ring -- "we're almost in the round" -- is far more stylised than just sparring. Dancers fling themselves from one side of the ring to the other, bodies clash in a flurry of movement.

"Boxing has always been known as a form of dance," Duff says. "The punches in Beautiful Burnout tend not to land, but they have to look as if they're landing. I think that's part of the reason this piece sits so brilliantly as a dance-theatre work."

The production, which also stars Duncan Anderson, Kevin Guthrie, Eddie Kay, Vicki Manderson, Taqi Nazeer and Ewan Stewart, is played out to the beat-heavy strains of British electro duo Underworld.

The companies working on Beautiful Burnout have a strong resonance in Australia. The National Theatre of Scotland was last in the country in 2008 for its production Black Watch, also directed by Hoggett, about the famed Scots military regiment. And Frantic Assembly was in Australia in 2010 with Stockholm, made in collaboration with Sydney Theatre Company.

Lavery, a Tony-nominated playwright, has also had positive responses to her work. Kursk, which premiered last year at London's Young Vic, played at Sydney Opera House in October and was largely well received.

Duff says Lavery trusted Frantic and NTS with her script, and was "on the ground" in its adaptation to a cross-genre piece.

Duff, for her part, is embracing her return to the stage. She started her acting career in the early 1980s with the Scottish Youth and Community Theatre before taking on non-singing roles with the English National and Scottish operas. She landed the role of Jackie Reid on Taggart in 1990.

"I've had a fantastic 21 years on Taggart and it's afforded me the opportunity to have the best of both worlds," she says. "I like being on stage where you can bring a moment of stillness and quiet that you can't do in TV."

Duff concedes, however, she may find it hard to shake her image as "that woman from that Taggart".

But for anyone tempted to throw the show's famous catchphrase in Duff's direction, be aware she's heard it all before. "Most days someone will walk up to me in the street and say 'There's bin a murrrrder," Duff says. "I don't mind. To be honest, the only time it's a bit uncomfortable is when I'm in a hospital or at a funeral . . . then it's a bit odd.

"But the truth is, I quite like speaking to people, so sometimes it goes with the territory," she says.

"The day it stops, then I'll worry."

Beautiful Burnout is at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, January 18-29; and the Perth Festival, February 10-25.