CHRISTINE Absalom has been at the heart of the Mercury Theatre’s company of actors for more than a decade.

So there was no surprise at the reaction her recent illness provoked, both at the Colchester theatre and among Mercury regulars who have enjoyed her performances down the years.

She was lined up for the role of Ma in the Mercury’s production of Grapes of Wrath last year, but a week into rehearsals, Christine was forced to pull out because of a detached retina.

She said: “Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

“I’ve never really been sick. You just don’t, as an actor.

“We’d finished our first week of rehearsals and I’d gone home for the weekend. I was just sitting on my sofa and suddenly couldn’t see out my right eye.”

A trip to the hospital brought a swift diagnosis and an operation to put it back.

She added: “Then it was three weeks of just sitting very still keeping my head down in my arms.

“I was allowed just ten minutes in every hour to eat and go to the loo – you can imagine how frustrating it was.

“I was very scared at first, because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I couldn’t even think about not acting any more.”

Her sight restored, Christine is now back at the Mercury in a part most actresses would kill to play, Mrs Malaprop in Richard Sheridan’s the Rivals.

After years of productions where it was treated as a twee comedy of manners, Mercury director Gari Jones has found a more mischievous side to Sheridan’s comic masterpiece.

The man behind such shows as the Lonesome West, Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Depot, has been inspired by the original 18th-century definition of burlesque to take a different slant on the play.

The original burlesque sent up its subjects with grotesque humour and parody. and the Rivals offers plenty of scope for all that.

It offers characters such as the young rogue Captain Absolute, trigger-happy Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Mrs Malaprop, whose tendency to mangle the language long ago found her a place in the English dictionary.

The story follows the fate of a young woman who escapes the conventions of society and a looming arranged marriage, by reading on steamy page-turners and fixing her heart on a handsome soldier.

Her head is a whirl of secret assignations as she tricks her overbearing and verbally-challenged aunt, Mrs Malaprop into getting what she wants.

Christine said: “What a part to come back to! She’s got some of the greatest lines in comic theatre.

“One of my favourites is when she mixes up pinnacle and pineapple to say ‘he is the very pineapple of politeness’.”

Born and brought up in Rayleigh, Christine first acted at the town’s FitzWimarc School, inspired by a “fantastic” music teacher.

After training at Lamda, her first professional job was at the Salisbury Playhouse, playing the pussycat in the Owl and the Pussycat. She has been performing in regional theatres ever since. She played Mrs Malaprop in Exeter 15 years ago, but is hoping the new production will fare better.

She explained: “Unfortunately, the actor playing Sir Anthony died.

“It was three days into the run and there was no understudy, so we had to scour the country for an actor who knew the part.”