She played much-loved Coronation Street character Kylie for six years, until the wife of David Platt was dramatically killed-off in harrowing scenes that prompted tears across the nation. After winning hearts as the reformed gobby cage dancer, soap star Paula Lane will be playing a 'Kylie-esque' character in Oldham Coliseum Theatre's stage production of Road, Jim Cartwright’s powerful snapshot of Lancashire life during Thatcher’s England in the 80s.
In the play, running at the Coliseum from Friday September 16 to Saturday October 1, Paula plays not one but four characters, including the 'hostile and bitter' Brenda, who she says like is an older version of feisty Kylie. Speaking about the challenges of playing multiple characters on stage she said: "I feel like if anything it's given me lot of a freedom. You've got to be on the ball the whole time.
"It keeps you on the ball, you're having to be extra alert all the time. And for an actor it's particularly fun because you're exploring different energies moods and emotions."
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Asked if there are parallels between this play and Corrie, which has portrayed working class life in the fictional town of Weatherfield in Greater Manchester since it first aired in 1960, she said: "I think so. For sure It's a little bit more hard-hitting because it doesn't leave anything behind. It doesn't leave anything unspoken. Everything is out there in this play.
"If a character is feeling angry that will fully come out all guns blazing, whereas Corrie has to kind of be mindful of family viewing and what not. Let's just say it's probably like Corrie times 100.
"You've got the great northern grit, the comedy that might just not land if it was set elsewhere. We are resilient people that are natually funny at times even through tragedy. I guess there will be similarities."
She added: "I'm sure people will go that was a bit Kylie-esque that because obviously she's on a similar sort of level. Brenda is probably like an older version of Kylie to be honest if it had all fallen apart for her."
Mum-of-two Kylie had a tragic departure from the ITV soap when she was stabbed to death outside the kebab shop by thug Clayton Hibbs after buying champagne to celebrate a new start for her family in Barbados with her half sister Becky McDonald. The 36-year-old actress believes that it was the right time to leave the street following a triumphantly flawless live episode in 2015.
Asked what may have come of her character Paula said: "Who knows? That's the beauty of storytelling. Sometimes it can end sometimes it can have continuation, it is what it is.
"But I guess it's good to leave people wanting more, to leave people guessing rather than 'I wish they'd get rid of that one, she's no good.' I get it a lot. I can't tell you how many times people are like 'I really miss you on that, if they'd have just done this...'"
Taking a lead role in the live episode, which saw Kylie kill her ex Callum Logan with a wrench and bury his body in a manhole under Gail Platt's granny flat, Paula says it prepared her for future roles on stage. "The live episode we knew we were playing out to millions. Insane," she said.
"You've got that camera there and you're thinking 'there are millions of people watching behind that lens. Okay.' It did prep me for that feeling of the here and now and feeling quote exposed."
Paula, who joined the soap in 2010, says she's proud of what she achieved with the troubled character. Kylie had an explosive arrival in Weatherfield when she sold her son Max to her sister Becky for £20,000 and became a permanent resident when she turned out to be David's new fiancee when he returned home from holiday engaged.
"I feel really proud because she wasn't the easiest to love from an audience point of view and that was my job as the actor and the writers. We fed each other," she reflected.
"I knew I just couldn't make her this chav. There had to be a story and reasons as to why she beheved the way she did and once that was established it was easier to pad her out and have those moments that tenderness and things.
"I feel really proud they really took her in their heart and she's missed and that I had equal amount of comedy as I did tragedy. You can't ask for more."
Paula added: "I feel like I played every single side of her that I could do. I never wanted to get bored of her. She was worth way more than that."
Paula is also proud to have an acting family. Her husband Tom Shaw, who she married in 2014, also starred in Coronation Street in April and June 2017 as Kim Vaughan, a friend of Fiz Stape, and their children Arthur, seven, and Penny, six, are following in their footsteps.
She said: "They've just done a big advert that's on at the minute for Dairylea and Arthur's done a feature film at the start of the year with Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. He got that role. So we're all in the industry now which to be honest wasn't intentional. Arthur got that job through a casting call, it was nothing to do with that his parents are actors."
Paula says Road, first premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1986, is still as relevant as today as it was when it was first performed. "There's a lot of people who can most probably recognise themselves perhaps in some of the characters up there or perhaps can sympathise now with how quickly your circumstances can change," she explained.
"It's hard-hitting, these people, these characters are in a pretty dire situation. But at the same time some of them cope very differently with that and it's fascinating that actually some are alright with that. Some actually go 'do you know what this is my lot and this is my road and that's cool and take what we've got.'
"Wheras you get other characters who would love to break out of that and aspire to be the things that for whatever reason they're just unable to and. They're locked in and can't get out of it. Similar to how some of us feel."
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