A mother of a year

In The House of Bernada Alba, Michele Hine plays the domineering, joyless matriarch of a family of daughters. Photo / Supplied

Maturity and experience have rewarded actor Michele Hine with three plum roles this year.

For a long time there weren't too many interesting characters for older women to play, says 54-year-old Hine, who has been acting, directing and teaching drama for 36 years, including a seven-year stint in the UK, where she met her New Zealand-born husband John McBride.

"Then this year I've had three lovely, older, very contrasting, fantastic women's roles.

"They're all women who are dealing with the loss of a husband and growing children, or children who are grown up now, but they are all extraordinarily different."

Already on our screens in Go Girls playing Carol Duff, mother of new-to-series-two "altar-bolter" Olivia (Esther Stephens), Hine will play the title role in The House of Bernada Alba from June 11-20 at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre (TAPAC).

In July she will be back on set filming the third series of Go Girls and in November she will reprise her role of Jude in the play The Idea of America, which debuted earlier this year.

Hine says she loves the positive atmosphere on the Go Girls set, especially working alongside some of her former students. Many of the "Go Girls and Go Boys" are graduates of the drama school Hine helped establish at Auckland's Unitec after taking a step back from performing when her children Sophie, 19, and Daniel, 16, were babies.

Hine is thrilled her character, Carol, who "started off very bland and and unconfident" after being dumped by her husband, now has a big storyline coming up in episode 12, which airs on June 10.

"Carol is an empathetic character who has lost her way a bit, lost herself. What's very satisfying is that she's finding herself now and continues to find herself in interesting ways," says Hine.

The role of domineering matriarch Bernada Alba is the complete opposite, says Hine.

"I've never played such a mean, horrible person in my life - and it's fascinating.

"She buttons everything down, her own joy, her sensuality, anything."

The House of Bernada Alba, written in 1936 by left-wing Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, has been given a more universal treatment by director Margaret-Mary Hollins and her talented, all-female cast. An overbearing mother cares more about what the neighbours think than her five daughters' desire for love and freedom.
Her attempts to suppress their blossoming sexuality and playful flirtations only fuel their bottled-up passions and jealousies, with explosive results.

Hine, who analyses her character's personality in depth, explains that Bernada Alba's anger and bitterness stem from fear and have turned her into a control freak.

"Her husband has died and she is desperately scared she is going to lose control of her five daughters and her respectability. What's most important for her is to be seen to be respectable and superior within her little community. She's scared of losing her place in that society. She won't let her daughters do anything that might be slightly misunderstood or gossiped about."

From the oppressor to the outrageous, in November Hine takes another dramatic leap into the play The Idea of America and the flamboyant character of Jude, "an ageing American actress who thinks she is more famous than she is and treats her children as if they are dressing-room assistants".

"She's very egotistical. She's lots of fun, very witty and outrageous but is also descending slowing into alcohol-fuelled madness and dementia. But it is very funny. It was a glorious role to play and I'm looking forward to playing it again."

As a character actor, Hine says she always plays interesting people and finds the research she does for each role "intellectually stimulating".

"I'm over the moon to have these three very different women. It is a character actor's dream to be able to `inhabit' such different people and different realities."

*The House of Bernada Alba is at TAPAC, Western Springs, Auckland from June 11-20. For more information, visit www.tapac.org.nz or phone (09) 845 0295. Go Girls screens on TV2 Thursdays at 8.30pm.