You would expect a play by former Scrubs lead Zach… [Derived headline] in our site dragon age 2 characters

The Herald February 14, 2012 You would expect a play by former Scrubs lead Zach Braff to be funny. Eve Myles certainly insists it is. “It’s very funny. In the situation they are in it feels very funny.” She’s having to convince me because she’s just described Emma, the character she plays, a British real estate agent becalmed on Long Beach Island, in New Jersey.

“Emma is incredibly vulnerable and lonely and has terrible narcotic problems. She suffers from her past – it haunts her – and she’s screaming for friendship and help.” It sounds like a hoot, I comment, or words to that effect.

“You can’t achieve comedy without there being a level of darkness,” Myles, pictured, insists. “This play certainly has a very dark undertone. Zach has written these four characters who all suffer from some form of deficiency – whether it’s loneliness, drug problems, or social skills.

“It is a character comedy and you have to play it for real. That’s the same with everything – it’s even the same with Shakespeare – if you try too hard to make it work, it fails. It is a discipline of learning to trust the words.” The play, All New People, which opens at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, tonight, certainly has an intriguing pedigree. Braff, whose face is famous from a nine-year stint as JD in Scrubs, also wrote and directed the low-budget, intelligent – if slightly self-aware – hit film Garden State.

His play features Braff himself playing Charlie, whose birthday is disrupted by the arrival of four misfits at his Long Beach apartment.

Myles is also most familiar from television where she has played Agent Gwen Cooper for four seasons of the sci-fi series Torchwood – the butt-kicking Welsh former cop who is also a new mum. The accent, her own, is very much in evidence but she will play Emma as English – indeed she has never been Welsh in a considerable stage career.

However she hasn’t taken to the stage for six years now. “It terrifies me. But it makes me feel alive and challenges me every night,” she says.

She claims to be starstruck by Braff, who she says is a comedy genius and the antithesis of a diva. “He is very generous, kind and funny. I’m starstruck nearly every day of my life at the moment.” That’s somewhat surprising after eight months in Hollywood filming a glossy fourth season of Torchwood with the likes of ER star Mekhi Phifer – which she describes as the time of her life. She cites the pace of life and the weather which lets you sit out late into the evening.

But it is the food which really animates her. “They have a monster burger, like you’ve never tasted in your life,” she explodes, a sing-song south Wales burr rounding out her excitement. “The In-Out burger, oh my god, it is unbelievable.

“And I ate my own weight in Red Velvet Cake…” What else made the stay so great? Might Myles, for instance, like to make a Hollywood movie?

“I’m a jobbing actor and whoever you are, whenever someone mentions movies, your eyes light up. You get to do an extraordinary amount of work in 90 minutes with a beginning, a middle and an end – one big whomping movie,” she enthuses. “The budget is extraordinary and you know that what is in the script is going to be in the movie.” This differentiates it from telly work: “You get a TV script these days and you turn up and on the first day they’ve lost the posh car. The big flat is now a bedsit, and the helicopter’s been taken out,” she explains.

To be fair, that wasn’t the impression given by the recent Torchwood episodes which did feature helicopters, not to mention rocket launchers, incineration chambers and a giant abyss plunging deep into the earth’s core. website dragon age 2 characters

Torchwood’s different, Myles says. The series is currently on an official hiatus, but this doesn’t seem in any way her choice.

“The moment Russell [Torchwood creator and Dr Who reanimator Russell T Davies] picks up the phone to John [Barrowman] and I, we will be on the sofa beside him,” Myles says. “No hesitation.

“Gwen is possibly the best character a woman can possibly play. She’s a mother, wife and defender of the earth, who gets to fight aliens and blow helicopters out of the sky. I adore playing Gwen Cooper. It’s exhilarating.

“It’s bloody exhausting, I’m not going to lie. I end up black and blue with injuries. But still.” This role, and spin off-roles in Doctor Who, have recently overshadowed her theatre work. She featured in a spectacular cameo in teatime sword and sorcery frolic Merlin. She’s even done a voice role in the computer game Dragon Age 2 as “Dalish elf Merrill”.

Is there a chance she is being stereotyped into the kind of roles that fulfil the more chaste fantasies of teenage boys? She lets out a peal of laughter. “There’s a possibility perhaps. Dragon Age 2 was bizarre. I mentioned over Sunday lunch that I’d been asked to voice this character. I don’t do gaming. And my fiance’s nephew looked up from his plate and said: “What? If you don’t do this I will never speak to you again.” Hours of recording result in a performance, much of which can only be seen by those willing to play through several hours of video game, she concedes. “Yes, but the character is huge. She actually has her own massive fan base.” More traditional audiences appear to be enjoying All New People, which had a successful run in New York, and has been in Manchester, before moving to Glasgow then London.

Myles is plainly delighted to be acting on stage again and keen to bring the play to Glasgow, where she has a host of relatives on her Dad’s side.

“It’s a short play and moves like lightning. It’s the kind of play I like to watch and perform.

“It is a different art form, having people’s faces in front of you smiling and engaged in the story you are telling. It is a privilege to have people choosing to sit under the same roof for us to entertain them.

“People will leave from this play buzzing from excitement and I love being a part of that.” All New People is at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, today to Saturday, with matinees tomorrow and Saturday.