Will She Do? - Act One of a Life on Stage

''She is the cur''s cods, the terrier''s testicles, the business. I will go farther and declare that Atkins is the finest actor appearing in the world right now'' - A. A. Gill


Will She Do? is the story of a girl from a council estate in Tottenham, born in 1934 to an electric-meter reader and a seamstress, who was determined to be an actress.

Candid and witty, this memoir takes her from her awkward performances in working-men''s clubs at six years of age as dancing ''Baby Eileen'', through the war years in London, to her breakthrough at thirty-two on Broadway with The Killing of Sister George, for which she received the first of four Tony Award nominations. She co-created Upstairs, Downstairs and wrote the screenplay for Mrs Dalloway (for which she won an Evening Standard Award) and at aged eighty-six, this is her first autobiographical work.

Characterised by an eye for the absurd, a terrific knack for s