Helen Schlesinger

Stage

Helen Schlesinger got a First in English at Wadham College Oxford University, and then trained at the Drama Studio London. After working on the fringe in London (Finborough, the Old Red Lion) Helen joined Compass Theatre Company, and toured for two years, mainly Shakespeare, all over the country and abroad. She played Juliet, Miranda, Hermione, Hamlet in Hamlet, and Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone. Then she worked in repertory theatre, in parts including Gilda in Design For Living in Harrogate, Miss Julie in Plymouth, the title role in The Second Mrs Tanqueray at Salisbury Playhouse and Jane in Wild Oats in the first production at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. After moving to London, Helen appeared in Becket at the Haymarket with Derek Jacobi and Robert Lindsay, and then joined Shared Experience, playing Maggie Tulliver in their production of The Mill on the Floss which played at the Tricycle Theatre and Lyric Hammersmith in London, and toured the UK, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. She went on to work with Shared Experience again at the National Theatre, playing Maria in War and Peace, where she also appeared in Inadmissable Evidence, An Inspector Calls (at the Garrick Theatre) and a few years later, Clytemnestra in The Oresteia. Helen played Viola in Twelfth Night and Portia in The Merchant of Venice for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in Stratford and the Barbican. She has worked extensively at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, playing Goneril in King Lear and Yelena in Uncle Vanya, both with Tom Courtenay, Josie in A Moon for the Misbegotten (winner and nominee Best Actress Manchester Evening News and Regional Theatre Awards) and Elsa in The Road to Mecca. At the Royal Court productions include Wild East by April de Angelis and The Stone by Marius Von Mayenburg; she appeared in Fireface at the Young Vic by the latter playwright; productions at Hampstead Theatre include Comfort Me with Apples by Nell Leyshon and Skane by Pamela Carter, and for the Bush Theatre Whipping It Up by Steve Thompson, which transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre. Helen played Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible for the RSC which transferred from Stratford to the Gielgud Theatre and for which she won Best Supporting Actress at the Whatsonstage Awards. At the Donmar Warehouse Helen played Sicinius in their recent production of Coriolanus, and she was Elizabeth in Alexi Kaye Campbell's Bracken Moor at the Tricycle Theatre. Recently Helen played HRH and Coral Browne in Alan Bennett's Single Spies at the Rose Theatre Kingston, and she appeared in Bryony Lavery's Frozen at the Park Theatre.

She lives in Battersea with her newspaper editor partner Richard Addis, and her two sons Theo and Sebastian.

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