Lydia West on making her stage debut and the power of It’s a Sin: ‘It changed my whole life’

When Lydia West steps onto the Barbican stage next week to make her professional theatre debut, she has an advantage: the much-loved star of It’s a Sin is playing a character who has never performed live before. “She doesn’t have the chops to tell the story, so she’s going to be a bit of a wreck on stage,” West laughs. “And that might work in my favour!”

Talking to her, it’s clear the infectious enthusiasm and glorious spirit that has carried West to star (and almost national treasure) status not just in It’s a Sin, but Years and Years, Inside Man and a host of other prestige dramas, is undimmed.

And she’s bringing that warmth and enthusiasm to A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, which runs for five performances at the Barbican from next Wednesday.

Written by US playwright Miranda Rose Hall, directed by Katie Mitchell and created with Headlong theatre company, it’s a 70-minute one-woman show about the climate crisis. It’s about anxiety, depression and tragedy. But it’s also very funny and full of humanity. “The way I’m choosing projects now,” West says, “I love entertainment primarily, but also informative, educational, ground-breaking, important work. So I was instantly drawn to it.”

The premise is that her character Naomi, who works behind the scenes in an eco-focused theatre company, has been left on stage by the performers, who haven’t shown up. She has no show and no performance experience but a lot of facts and anxiety about the climate crisis. Slowly but surely she starts talking about what she knows and how she feels.

For West, A Play for the Living felt perfect for her professional theatre debut. “This just came along at the right time and seemed the perfect fit to tell such an impactful, important piece… It just feels right.”

So will a monologue about impending ecological disaster make for a good night at the theatre? “When you watch a David Attenborough documentary, it’s very digestible, it’s very positive – even though he’s talking about such a catastrophe in most of his documentaries – and that’s what I want to do with the play. Not make it a preachy soapbox, ‘The world is ending and we’re all f**ked.’

“I want the audience to leave saying, ‘Wow I’ve learnt something. What can I do with this information?’ Even just a small change in the way you interact with the environment and the world around you and other humans.”

It has still been a hard role to prepare for, “The way I learn is by feelings and a lot of Naomi is feeling-driven,” she says. “There’s a lot of trauma there. She’s feeling a huge sense of loss. I personally can relate to that in my everyday life and anxieties and I think so many of us and so many of my generation can.”

She researched by reading The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book referenced in the play, and a range of other climate books. What started as a science lesson quickly became darker, “I got myself into a bit of a climate hole and a bit of climate depression.”

She had to set herself boundaries. “I do get so immersed in the research and so into the topic. I’m not method, but somehow I get into the shoes of Naomi and I feel like her and I leave rehearsals and I’m sad, and I wake up the next day and I’m a bit depressed. These things do affect me. I think I’ve learnt that my boundaries are that I can read The Sixth Extinction, but not before bed. Maybe before bed… Love Island, because you will not sleep otherwise.”

Naomi tells stories about the five mass extinctions so far, about the current state of the climate, the causes and effects, but also of personal trauma and grief of losing loved ones. “That trauma is generational, and it imprints itself into our DNA and our atoms,” West says. “The whole point is when she thinks of extinction, something in her can feel the trauma of the loss and the mass death and it’s all within us and even if we think we’re not involved, it’s somehow imprinted in our DNA. Naomi is battling with that anxiety and depression about it but we can all relate to it in some way.”

The show is seeking to practice what it preaches. It will tour to different cities, but the actors and sets will not – it will be made by local creatives in each place. It’s also powered by bicycle, with people pedalling throughout the show. “We can’t have this amazing speech, this amazing character telling this amazing story with then using so much electricity and then the actors and directors touring and taking planes that impact the environment. We’re really trying to make it, from every aspect, very, very ecological.”

West, who lives in Walthamstow, grew up, the youngest of three, in north London and trained as a dancer, though after an injury went to study business at university – “I thought that’s what people wanted in my family.”

But while working as a personal assistant after graduating, she had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that something was missing, and joined an amateur theatre company. “It was therapy before I knew what therapy was,” she says. “It was being able to step into other people’s shoes, and escape from myself.”

It spiralled. The theatre company led to an agent, and then she signed up to drama school Identity, during which time she landed a role in dystopian Russell T Davies BBC One series Years and Years in 2019. She followed that with Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of Dracula, also on the BBC, playing Lucy Westenra.

Then in 2021 came another Davies show: It’s a Sin. And what a show it was. Following a group of friends set against the AIDS epidemic of the Eighties and Nineties it was a huge critical hit and one of Channel 4’s most successful dramas.

“It’s really changed me professionally and personally,” West says, who was BAFTA nominated for her role as Jill Baxter. “It’s made me grow as a person so much. It’s helped me find my voice, it’s helped me find my confidence and it all started there... It’s changed my whole life.” She was so moved, she says, by how the show connected with a whole generation and she loves speaking to people about it.

It’s a Sin also starred Olly Alexander, Omari Douglas and Callum Scott Howells (the latter two have both also appeared on prominent London stages this year). “I look at it so fondly and friends I made during that time, the team – it’s like the benchmark. And I’ve been in other projects since that haven’t had the same energy and all I want to do with work is bring that, that feeling of friendship and togetherness and love.”

Professionally the show’s success has allowed her to be selective about what she chooses. She has since starred with David Tennant and Stanley Tucci – “He’s just so cool” – in Inside Man, another BBC drama; with Uma Thurman in Apple TV+ thriller Suspicion; and opposite Mike Myers in The Pentaverate on Netflix. “I learned so much from Mike about comedy beats and improvisation and all this stuff I had no training and no idea of.”

She’s also filming a new TV series for Channel 4, with Derry Girls and Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan; a show about female friendship and mental health (“It’s also funny as hell”).

Mental health is a particular focus for West. After It’s a Sin she was named as one of the participants on the BAFTA Breakthrough initiative which allowed her to choose two mentors. She chose Suranne Jones and Will Poulter “because of their work in mental health.” She is working with Jones on a project to support mental health on sets.

Things are getting better in the industry she says, but adds “change starts with yourself… If you’re in a lead role, you’re there to act but also to manage a team and keep team morale up.” For those with influence, it’s important to ensure the set is safe, she says.

As an actor, she found it tough early in her career, especially with audition room comments around appearance. “When you’re a young actor, and you’re female and a woman of colour or a minority – even if you’re not those things, you’re a male actor in your 20s – you’re very impressionable. People can say things and you will be affected by it. And with age, and personal confidence and self-esteem you learn to accept those things are not within you, they’re someone else’s problem.

“It is getting better but advice to any young actor is, don’t listen to anyone, just be you.”

In June, West turns 30. “Personally I love the fact I’m getting older,” she says. “My 20s were so much about finding myself, finding my voice, who I was and my identity and that is scary and hard and triggering. Growing up and coming out of it, with every year that passes, I’m closer to being myself and more comfortable in that. I can’t wait to be 30. I’m so not afraid of ageing, of being like, 60. I just want to be old and have my life together.”

She’s a keen potter, loves hot yoga and does boxing, and her career is flying, “I feel very grateful, I feel very satisfied and fulfilled. I’m working with purpose. That’s all anyone can want.”

A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, presented by Headlong, is at the Barbican to April 29; barbican.org.uk