Former Hollyoaks actress Phina Oruche says her latest Liverpool stage role is a bucket list ambition

Liverpool actress Phina Oruche is about to make her Everyman Theatre debut in what she describes as a ‘bucket list’ role.

She is matriarch Carol Hylton in a new comedy drama, Takeaway, set in the city and written by the Everyman’s Creative Director Nathan Powell.

The play follows the story of a recently-widowed mother who runs a Caribbean takeaway, and her two daughters, as they come to terms with huge changes within their family and their community.

For Toxteth-born Phina, who played Gabby Sharpe in Hollyoaks, the opportunity to perform at the Hope Street theatre marks a return to the stage and the fulfilment of a long-held ambition.

She says:

“I used to walk in the shadow of the Everyman every day when I was growing up so it’s been a huge part of my consciousness since I was a teenager. Then I wasn’t even thinking about acting, it was almost the impossible dream, but since becoming an actor I’ve wanted to be there so I’m delighted it’s finally happening.

“Everything about this production is something I’ve always wanted to do so it’s genuinely a bucket list role for me. 

“I’ve never played a Scouser, so it’s nice to be able to speak in my native voice, and it’s good to read characters that I see. A lot of the time I’m putting on a weave and being an American but Takeaway is very much something I identify with, I’ve lived around the Caribbean takeaway my whole life and Carol feels like someone I really know.

“It’s about gentrification, family ties and loyalties, and identity. It’s very touching and very funny.”

After a highly successful modelling career in the US, Phina found fame on both sides of the Atlantic in long-running series including Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Footballers Wives and Hollyoaks.

She is soon to appear on screen in an upcoming Jimmy McGovern drama, set and filmed in Liverpool, alongside Anna Friel, David Threlfall and Anna Maxwell Martin.

She says the stage was where she fell in love with acting after training at the world-famous Actor’s Studio in Los Angeles.

“My first professional acting experience was in a play called Visions and Lovers that debuted at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in the late ‘90s, so being on the Everyman stage now feels like full circle.”

Phina’s most recent theatre work came with her one-woman show, Identity Crisis, which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe and went on to be performed in London, New York and Shakespeare North Playhouse.

“I love the challenge of theatre because the people who you’re trying to connect with are right in front of you and that reaction is instant. With television you don’t have to answer for it as you’re making it. 

“On stage, you’re not focused on one scene at a time, you’ve got to commit to the entire journey because it’s in real time and that’s like walking on a tightrope, moment to moment.

“If it doesn’t ring true, the audience knows and pretty soon you know too so the stakes are high.

“I think stories come to you when you’re ready to tell them and with Takeaway I’m ready to play a mother who knows and loves Liverpool and who’s trying to hold her family together. I felt like I was the right girl at the right moment, and this is the right role for me.”

Takeaway is at the Everyman Theatre from April 26-May 17.

Book tickets for Takeaway on the Everyman Theatre website.

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