‘It’s brutal now’: Strongwoman Maimouna Maimoune talks about the surprise that followed her Olivier Award win | stage

TIn his time last year, Maimuna Maimun was surfing career highs. The Lancashire-born composer, writer and actress has just won an Olivier Award for her performance in the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, based on a section of the novel War and Peace. But then everything fell silent. “I wasn’t expecting this number to go up so much, but I thought: ‘Okay, what’s next?’” she says. “It’s been a fairly quiet year, and it’s been tough.”

It turns out to be useful in terms of “ego abstraction.” She went to Galway to be with her mother, a nurse and violinist. “I watched her play and I saw these amazing musicians playing for the love of it — not for how they would be rated, or to win any awards, or any of that.”

However, the results of her Olivier win seem strange. Memon, 33, is no charlatan. She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of Mary Magdalene in Tim Scheider’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar, sang her own compositions in the National Theatre’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, and was nominated for her first Olivier Award for the musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge. How did you understand this strange calm?

Maimon, a calm presence whose words reflect a thoughtful self-awareness, isn’t sure (“Whether it’s because of how I feel about myself, I don’t know…”), but she says times are tough for many people in her line of work. “It’s brutal right now. Celebrity casting is huge and it reduces the amount of jobs available. I’m not criticizing the people who make the decisions but I’m saying that He is Affect working actors. A lot of people I know who are incredible had a really bad time last year.

Maimon has moved on, and now stars in a new version of her musical Manic Street Creature, which she performs in the Edinburgh region in 2022. It is a semi-autobiographical theater show that follows singer-songwriter Raya from Lancashire to London, where she records her debut album and falls in love with Daniel. “She discovered that Daniel had bipolar disorder, and it was a matter of finding the best ways to support him,” Maimon explains. “But in that effort, she forgot to take care of herself.”

It is not surprising that Maimon began his career partly through composition. Her Irish mother and Pakistani-born father, a doctor, were obsessed with music when she was growing up. “There was no exposure to theater in my family. I didn’t really understand what theater could be, but I knew I loved music. My father had CD collections. He would play us Deep Purple, Bob Marley, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, all the great ’70s and ’80s songs. He loved traditional Indian and Pakistani music as well. My mother played a lot of traditional Irish music, which I absolutely loved.”

She took violin lessons, then began teaching herself the piano and guitar. Her three brothers are also musicians. “My father never had a single doctor or accountant,” she says with a laugh, but adds seriously: “He worked really hard.” [after emigrating] So that I can have the opportunity to be an artist myself. Her mother did the same thing.

Maimon grew up in Darwen, a town between Bolton and Blackburn, without the multicultural atmosphere of those areas. “It was a very white area,” she says, speaking of the family’s vandalized fence. “It had the P word spray-painted on it.” However, she didn’t have a bad time there, she maintains, and has fond memories. Coming back now is a different experience again. “It was really interesting to go back to Christmas this year and see the St. George flags all over the city. I thought: ‘Is this my home anymore?’ What does this mean to me?” I’m very proud to be a northerner, very proudly Lancashire. For a long time I’ve been on the offensive, but recently I’ve been thinking about what is being offered to people there and I’ve been trying to look at it with more empathy. There’s not enough conversation. There’s always shouting back and forth.

When she was a teenager, after finding her tribe in Darwin, her father got a job in Australia. “If you think England is racist, we moved to a very small town outside Brisbane and it was even worse.” She returned to study at Oxford School of Drama, and has worked in the UK ever since. Do you feel an alien spirit as a result of these movements, as well as your mixed heritage? “I think so. I’ve always felt a bit on the sidelines.” But she puts that to work in her work: “That’s why I write, because I’m tired of seeing the lack of nuance on screen and stage.” New writers are not getting enough opportunities, she added, just days before National Theater director Indu Rubasingham issued a public warning about the same.

She suggests that casting celebrities can harm playwrights, taking away from the integrity of the writing because some audiences come to see the celebrity rather than the play. “I think we should have more faith in the fact that a good piece of writing will sell. When I graduated 10 years ago, it was possible for someone you’d never heard of to star in a huge play. It was a feeling that theater would create new names.”

Maimon’s dream part is “Pip” in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park With George, which Ariana Grande will play in London next year. “It won’t be coming for a while now, will it?” She adds that there is no doubt that Grande is an amazing performer. “I’m really jealous,” she says with a laugh, “but how can you compete with that?”