Brian Beacom

COULD you imagine the classic story of Carmen being relocated to Glasgow?

Could you consider Bizet’s operatic tale of the Spanish factory worker siren being set in a world of late night clubbing and benders?

Writer Benny Young certainly could. And now it’s being played out at Oran Mor this week, featuring Charlene Boyd as the lady with the power to drive men wild.

“It follows the operatic story fairly closely except our Carmen doesn’t die,” says Charlene, smiling.

“And our Carmen McGurn is very Glasgow, very working class. She drinks, she smokes, and the language she uses is fairly industrial.

The Cranhill Carmen doesn’t really sound like a keeper?

“Oh, she’s great,” says the actress, grinning, in empathic voice.

“She has lots of great qualities. She knows what she wants in life, to be treated for who she is and along the way she won’t make concessions.”

Charlene adds; “She’ll fight, literally, for what she thinks is right.”

The Glasgow Carmen, we discover, meets two handsome young men late at night on her way home from a bender.

There’s the young idealistic policeman from the Islands and a Glasgow matador, played by Ryan Fletcher and Ewan Petrie.

Who will this schemie burd choose and who will destroy her?

“Men are excited by her,” says Charlene. “And both the men fall in love with her.”

She adds; “And what’s great about the play is it reveals the Glasgow class divide, it illuminates the different sensibilities of the likes of Kelvinside and Cranhill.

“But mostly, it’s a story about following your heart.”

In that sense, Charlene has much in common with her theatrical creation. Growing up in Cumbernauld she reveals her original career plan was to become a dentist.

“I didn’t know anyone who had acted, although my mum had been a singer in a band.

“But in sixth year at school I picked up Higher Drama as added subject and I loved it.

“I can remember doing a scene from the House of Bernardo Alba and I just knew I wanted to keep on acting.”

What? You wanted to act even though you were yet to wallow in applause, the delight of being loved by an audience?

“Yes, I loved it regardless,” she says, laughing. “But I did come to appreciate the applause later.”

After Charlene graduated from RSAMD she worked in theatre for a couple of years but then took time out to have two children.

“It was great to be at home with the wee ones until I felt ready to come back.

“I came back to play Lady Macbeth (in The Macbeths at the Citizens’) and now this.”

Charlene, who will reprise her role in The Macbeths on tour, loves playing the gallus Carmen.

“I really do. She’s so confident about how she looks, what she wears, how she holds herself. And while I do tend to be cast as wonderfully dark characters quite a lot, such as Lady Macbeth and Isa in Men Should Weep, I’ve never played an actor so bolshy and so sure of herself.”

Was she Carmen-wild as a teenager?

“No, not wild,” she says, grinning. “I sort of go with the flow on a night out.”

Mmm. Did her mum think her daughter was a but wild?

“Yes. She did,” she says, laughing. “My mum looks back on my teenager years now and says all she ever did was worry.

“But I would add I do try to be helpful. And kind. I like people.”

Will some of the Carmen McGurn character stick? In reaching in to find her inner Carmen, will she hang around for a while after the run of the show?

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” she says, smiling.

“Right now, I’m a little quicker to tell people ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ And I’m also not trying to be like her in not judging people the moment I meet them.

“ But I don’t know how long it will last.”

Is this a case for taking classes in Carmen every six months?

“There is definitely a case,” she says, grinning.

“In fact it should be compulsory.”

* Cranhill Carmen, Oran Mor, until Saturday.