We caught up with William Lawlor for a quick chat about stepping into the role of Laurie in Care at Young Vic. More information and tickets are available here.
As Laurie in CARE, how did you approach portraying a teenager navigating family tensions and change in such an intimate, multigenerational story?
CARE is a play about perspectives on death, and everybody has a different experience of and relationship with it. My approach is to lean into the realness of that.
My real Grandma is in a care home, and I know from that experience that care homes aren’t easy for teenagers. Laurie is basically freaking out about being there, so I’m playing with that. There are elements of Joan (William’s on-stage grandmother, played by Linda Bassett) that are very similar to my Grandma, so that makes it easier to take a slice of my own experience into this role.
Having performed in productions from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to Arcadia, how has your experience so far shaped your approach to this more grounded, contemporary role?
I’m young, so I don’t really know my preference yet, but Alexander Zeldin’s naturalistic style so far feels like a good fit for me.
I’ve gone straight from Stoppard, with Arcadia at the Old Vic, to CARE – and they are sort of different ends of the spectrum from each other. But it’s a beautiful shift. With Arcadia we were sitting around a table for a month, diving into theories and physics and the sciences, and the play had all these different timelines. But, with CARE, while the writing is very specific and rehearsed, it comes across as natural and almost improvised. You’re magnifying the story of a family, and so it has to be real – families interrupt each other, for example, and no one listens to each other – and Alex wants it that way. It’s great.
I think the more styles of writing young actors are fortunate to experience, the better. I’m just being a sponge and making the most of the opportunity of working with these theatre veterans. I want to be at their level one day, so for me it’s about going in, learning my lines, not messing about and soaking it all up.
What has working with Alexander Zeldin revealed to you about capturing the quiet, everyday realities of family life on stage?
You can take an outward on inward approach to theatre – you can do big blockbuster spectacles with really rich, dense stories, or take a magnifying glass into a niche of life that people don’t usually talk about. We have to give those smaller stories a platform, too.
I’ve seen some of Alex’s other plays and he has this incredible specificity – he just gets right in there, right into the detail, and finds magic. His writing gives unspoken things the light of day. People might not necessarily want to confront these themes but his work lifts up a piece of life that everyone can relate to and puts it on the stage. People will absolutely see themselves and their family members on stage in CARE. You have to be a courageous writer to do that. Working with him is genuinely exciting.
At just 18, you’ve already built an impressive stage career—how are you continuing to challenge yourself and grow with each new role?
All I can do is keep learning and not take anything for granted because two months in the rehearsal room go really quickly. It’s important to me not to be complacent and go ‘well I’ve got the role now’, because after that point, the hardest work is still to happen.
I’m untrained, so working on a play like this is the most amazing education I could get – there’s really no better way for me to learn than doing it. I don’t want to look back on any role and feel like I haven’t learned anything. I want to finish each play knowing I’ve shifted the dial.
Also, the nature of this work means you might have a year of brilliance and then two years of nothing, so I’m grateful for every opportunity to learn and grow and just want to keep building.
Performing at Young Vic Theatre, known for its intimate and socially engaged work, how does the space and audience shape your performance?
The Young Vic Main House is such a dynamic space – I’ve never been in a theatre like it. It adapts to every production differently and, when it comes to an intimate story like this, the audience is right there on the journey with you.