Remembering all things Proust

How do you get all Proust's seven-volume Remembrance Of Things Past - which spans 30 years - on to the stage? It is a daunting task. But the script by Harold Pinter and Di Trevis (who also directs) is so good, in that classic Pinter concentrated/contradictory way, that we have something great to start with.

The thread is the narrator Marcel (played by Sebastian Harcombe), a writer who has not published anything - and the play is about him growing up. I play Albertine whom Marcel meets at a beach resort they go to every summer. Albertine is an orphan who hangs out with a group of young girls who get up to mischief.

Albertine and Marcel fall in love and start a relationship which is frowned on by his family because she is from a lower class. Marcel's dilemma is that he is incredibly jealous. He doesn't trust that she is faithful to him, which gives rise to a lot of tension. Marcel doesn't know if his fear is real, or just paranoia.

As we rehearsed the play I found Proust to be fantastically romantic and poetic, but also incredibly modern. He talks about experiences that we all have. The thing is he went into it in such depth. We don't give ourselves time to think about our lives the way he let himself.

The fact that he sat in his bedroom for 14 years obviously meant he was looking at every second of his life in minute detail. We all have the experience of smelling something and thinking, "Oh my God, that reminds me of when I was seven."