Edinburgh actress and Play School presenter Elizabeth Millbank returns to acting in a new audio drama set in the Capital's West End

TO a generation, Elizabeth Millbank will forever be the ‘Scottish’ Play School presenter of the 80’s.

Elizabeth Millbank

Fans of the top-rated BBC drama All Creatures Great and Small, on the other hand, may remember the Edinburgh actress as Alice McTavish, a girlfriend of Tristran Farnham, played by Peter Davison.

After a break from the business, Elizabeth returns to performing this week to star in a new audio play called The Walk, by Elaine Campbell. Part of the Citadel Goes Viral project, the latest initiative from Leith-based Citadel Arts Group, The Walk is one of six plays produced by the theatre company dedicated to expressing the creative voices of older people.

“Our older writers group have created six audio plays in which we explore and occasionally laugh at the challenges and tragedies of the new way of life imposed on us by the Covid-19 crisis,” explains Artistic Director, Liz Hare. “As all our projects went into lock down, we turned to Zoom, a new technology for us to tell the stories and express the creative voices of older people. We felt it was important that they shouldn’t be silenced by lockdown. We asked them to address this new world where we find ourselves.”

Elizabeth Millbank with Peter Davison in All Creatures Great and Small

She continues, “Some responded by looking at the tragic cost of Covid; others wrote about situations where there was still some humour.”

The fourth of the six plays in the series, The Walk finds Elizabeth Millbank playing 82-year-old Dina, who takes her allowed exercise by walking through the crazy streets of Edinburgh’s West End.

It’s a welcome return to what she loves best for Elizabeth who, along with her five sisters, was brought up in Inverleith Row during the 60s and 70s by her widowed father, who served with the Edinburgh and Leith police.

Attending Holy Cross Primary and St Augustine’s High School, the actress made her stage debut with Miss Margaret Jeffrey’s Dancing School, in Granton. However, it was an after-school job at The Laigh Coffee House on Hanover Street, owned then by the famous Scots actor Moultrie R Kelsall and his concert pianist wife Ruby, that led her to study at Glasgow’s RSAMD.

“They opened up a whole new world for me,” she recalls.

Working in theatre and television, including a stint at the RSC, Elizabeth then moved to California for 10 years, before returning home in 1993.

She explains, “I had my son, Ruaridh, in 1993 and returned to the UK. As a single parent I had to make mature choices and spent many years teaching drama and raising my son.”

With Ruaridh now graduated, she says, “Finally, I feel ready to return to my acting career and whatever that may bring.”

The final plays in the sextet are Old Normal, by Carolyn Lincoln, available from 3 August, and Planet Gliese 589, by John Lamb, available from 10 August.

Listen to The Walk and all the Citadel Goes Viral audio plays at www.citadelgoesviral.com

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