Bringing Little Women's "tomboy" to life in Eastbourne

“She's incredibly passionate as a character,” Grace says. “I think the one word that describes her best is effervescent. She is fizzing with new ideas all the time and quickly becomes driven by intense rage or intense emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve. I think she's a really special character and I'm going to have to get fit to play this! I think my fitness levels will go up and up! It is a great challenge that you have to break down in tears and erupt in rage and then the next second you can be happily ice skating on a lake!

“She often says that she wishes she were a boy. And I think that's one of the reasons the book has stood the test of time because she's such a modern character. Everyone wants to get married and have children and get their inheritance but she wants to make her own life and I think that makes her very appealing.”

Grace made her professional debut at Chichester Festival Theatre back in 2017 with The Country Girls: “I can't believe it is that long ago now but it was so special. It was unbelievably special and it set me up so well for my career. I won the Stage Debut Award for it, and that just helped me so much at the beginning of my career.”

Grace also returned to Chichester a year later for The Watsons: “We did that in the Minerva in 2018 and then again in 2019 at the Menier Chocolate Factory and then we had dates all set to go but two weeks before we were to start rehearsing Covid came along and all the theatres closed. The transfer never happened. It was heartbreaking. I loved that show so much it was so special and clever and fun and it would have been exactly what people needed after the pandemic. It was a travesty that it wasn't picked up. There was some muttering a long time after that it might happen but it just hasn't and I think time has moved on now.”

But both The Country Girls and The Watsons come to mind again as Grace launches into Little Women: “In Little Women I am playing Jo and the play does centre around Jo’s story. It moves in a very pacey way and time moves quite quickly but it does revolve around Jo. I don't really leave the stage. There's only one scene that I am not in – and with The Country Girls it was similar in the way it revolved around the character that I played. I didn't leave the stage.”

Little Women is also reminiscent of The Watsons, Grace feels: “Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women semi-autobiographically and Anne-Marie Casey who has adapted it has put in the notion that this is a story within a story about Jo's life. The Watsons was a play within a play very obviously but there is just a hint of that in this as well.”

Tickets priced from £28 with concessions are available including under-25s tickets for £20 on eastbournetheatres.co.uk or call the box office on 01323 412000.

Anne-Marie Casey’s stage adaptation will feature Belinda Lang, best known for her roles in Sister Boniface Mysteries and 2point4 Children (Aunt March), Foyles War’s Honeysuckle Weeks (Marmee) and Call the Midwife’s Jack Ashton (Brooke and Bhaer). Completing the company are Cillian Lenaghan (Laurie), Jade Kennedy (Meg), Catherine Chalk (Beth), Imogen Elliott (Amy).