English writer Dennis Kelly’s one-woman play Girls & Boys, which explores the consequences of a disintegrating marriage, starts out well enough. Its unnamed narrator relates in a jolly tone how she first met her future husband – and father of their two children – while boarding a flight home to the UK from Italy. “I have to say, I took an instant dislike to him.” That invariably gets a laugh from the audience, but soon they might start wishing she had followed her instincts.
“It’s a really, really tough play for the audience,” Kelly has said of his work, which debuted in 2018 at London’s Royal Court theatre, starring Carey Mulligan, then went off-Broadway.
Since then, actors around the world have taken on the role – and its 16,000 words – telling a story that begins in comedy and ends in tragedy, and which the Auckland Theatre Company warns isn’t suitable for anyone under 18.
Beatriz Romilly is relishing the challenge of being “the woman” and being on stage alone for nearly two hours in the ATC production.
“I love doing projects that terrify me,” she says during a chat in the company offices a few days before starting rehearsals. “The initial thing that attracted me is the character. She’s so witty, raw and flawed. She’s the sort of woman I would like to have as my friend …. If I am going to have her in my space for two months – or longer, because I’ve been learning the lines – what a delicious person to have in your life, her outlook, her emotional intelligence, her way of putting this argument forward.”
The role demands absolute commitment, the 41-year-old adds. “Once I get into something, it completely overtakes me. I know who I am as Beatriz but we are molecules full of energies. So, whether I like it or not, that is the trick – allowing your body to vibrate in that way.”
The children, Leanne and Danny, are key figures in the play, symbols of the opposing traits of the two sexes. As the monologue reveals, the little girl likes to build things when she plays; the boy destroys what she makes.
“It’s so real,” says Romilly. “I’ve got a couple of friends who have a girl and a boy of similar ages to the children and it’s describing them exactly.
“But it’s not about teaching you a lesson or a message. It’s asking you to question and look at our capacity for violence. It’s not being preachy. It’s a conversation we should be having to better understand ourselves.”
Romilly, who was born in Madrid, is relatively new to the New Zealand acting scene. She moved to Auckland from London in 2021 with her chef husband Josh, a Kiwi she’d met when they worked at the same bar. They married in 2019.
In Auckland, Romilly has started over, making a mark in ATC’s season of Grand Horizons in 2022 and in Michael Hurst’s 2023 production of King Lear, in which she played a gender-switched Edmund. She also did a short stint as a villainous psychotherapist on Shortland Street.
Romilly believes it was the right time to get out of London after Brexit and Covid.
“Yes, there are elements that are hard because I left what little stability I had in a career which I had worked my bollocks off to get and here I am starting again. But then I am watching Josh change into a much happier person.”
After graduating with an honours degree from Drama Centre London in 2005, Romilly won roles in a few UK TV shows and on the London stage, but also found a niche in voice and motion-capture work in video games.
Her theatre CV includes a lot of Shakespeare, including working alongside John Simm and Dervla Kirwan in Macbeth and as a feisty Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe in London. She returned to London in 2022 for a West End season of Danny Robins’ hit haunted-house thriller 2:22 A Ghost Story.
Romilly’s large family left Spain when she was 5, following her father’s career as a heart surgeon to Guildford in Surrey, where young Romilly, who didn’t speak English, had some trouble adjusting.
“The sandwiches Mum made for us at school had chorizo in them, which now you’d be saying, ‘thank you’ for, but then it was embarrassing because of the different smells. My mum’s an awesome cook and I’d always be doing my homework at the kitchen table so she could check I was doing my homework, so you’d smell of garlic and people can be quite cruel.
“I was called part of the Bart Simpson family because of the colour of my skin, you know, a bit yellow.”
When Romilly moved to London and entered the world of theatre, she fell in love with the city’s diversity.
“We were living in Dalston in the East End. It was so multicultural, we’d have our windows open, so many sounds. It’s a big Turkish area; lots of baklava, which I love.”
Romilly can see a future where she and Josh might venture out into the wider world again – but only if it suits them both. “We’ve done such a big move to come here we think we could go anywhere. It makes you braver.
“If I go back to London, which I did for 2:22, it will have to be something that justifies me being away for six months.
“I am still ambitious and career-driven, but I appreciate my life a lot more and the people I love. Life is teeny-tiny and if you get obsessed with one thing, you lose out.”
Right now, she is easing into Girls & Boys. She has been learning the script while walking around a park near her central Auckland home.
“It’s like a stand-up routine. It’s all a build-up to the punchline but there are little hints. She is leading you to a point.”
And she’s steeling herself for those molecules of hers taking on the vibration of someone for whom life has taken a very dark turn.
“Every character takes its toll in some way, and it’s learning how to put your body in such a space that you go, ‘We are just playing and we are going to go here for this, for two hours.’
“At the end of the day, you put it to bed and I come out as Beatriz and I don’t have to suffer any of the consequences.”
Girls & Boys, Auckland Theatre Company, ASB Waterfront Theatre, September 10-22.
