Power for the Blue Room

It is a hard act to follow. Nicole Kidman's impressive West End stage debut in The Blue Room two years ago set pulses racing - not least because she wore very little, if anything at all.

To regenerate that "theatrical Viagra" is a tall order for any actress following in the Kidman wake. But Camilla Power sounds remarkably cool and confident about her chances for a 23-year-old.

She is due to play the five Kidman roles - the prostitute, the au pair girl, the teenage model, the politician's wife and the actress - in a new production of David Hare's sexual roundabout of a play at the Haymarket Theatre.

Though the opening on Monday will mark her West End stage debut, she has reason to be confident. When she did the play at Chichester in the summer, the critics were entranced.

"In Camilla Power," wrote The Times, "we have a young English actress as subtly sensuous and effortlessly appealing as Kidman herself. Believe me, this is an actress to watch and not just because she feasts your eyes."

Camilla, who was born in Cork, insists that she was never really bothered by the possibility of comparisons. "I thought, sod it, I am just going to get on with it," she said. "If you let it worry you, it's fatal. It is such a wonderful part, so wonderful to have the chance to play all these different women and I feel it is completely mine.

"I did not see the Donmar production with Nicole Kidman. At the time I was sorry to have missed it. But in hindsight I am glad," she said.

Nor was she disturbed by the prospect of talking her clothes off. "It doesn't bother me," she said. "I have a little boy (18-month-old Joe by agent Dallas Smith), and I am not particularly precious about my body.

"You actually have a tremendous amount of power if you have no clothes on. It is so easy to embarrass people if you want to."

Curious about the impact of nudity on an audience, she even experimented to see how one would react to a particularly funny line that she had to deliver.